Tech Giants Demand NYT AI Logs in Copyright Lawsuit

A new front has opened in the landmark copyright lawsuit between the New York Times, OpenAI, and Microsoft. The core of this latest skirmish revolves around the New York Times' own internal use of artificial intelligence and whether records of that usage are relevant to the case.

Tech Giants Demand Access to NYT's AI Logs

In legal briefs filed on August 22, both OpenAI and Microsoft argued that access to the Times' internal AI tool logs is critical for their defense. The tech companies are demanding over 80,000 logs which they believe will demonstrate that OpenAI's Large Language Models (LLMs) can be used in ways that do not infringe on copyrights. According to arguments from OpenAI and Microsoft, these records could prove that the technology has substantial non-infringing applications, a key component of their legal strategy.

The Times Argues Irrelevance

On the same day, the New York Times countered these demands, asserting that its internal documents are irrelevant to the central claims of the lawsuit. The Times' legal team stated that their case focuses on contributory copyright infringement—specifically, instances where ChatGPT is prompted to generate outputs that directly copy or closely mimic their proprietary articles. From their perspective, how their own employees use AI tools for different purposes has no bearing on whether the tech giants unlawfully used Times content for training and whether the resulting product facilitates copyright violations.