NYT Case vs. Microsoft, OpenAI Is Deemed Related to Earlier Authors Guild Suit

The New York Times Co.’s copyright infringement lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI (see 2312270044) was assigned Tuesday to U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein for Southern New York in Manhattan, said a text-only docket entry (docket 1:23-cv-11195). Stein presided over the suit brought in the fall against OpenAI by the Authors Guild and 17 authors (docket 1:23-cv-08292), including John Grisham and Scott Turow (see 2312060054). The suit was amended later to include Microsoft. Stein received the newspaper's suit after the judge deemed the two cases related, said a separate docket entry Tuesday. Both cases allege that OpenAI and Microsoft copied the rights owners’ protected works to train their large language models as generative AI tools, and did so without compensating the rights owners or seeking their consent.