A federal judge in New York dismissed a lawsuit Thursday brought by Raw Story Media, Inc., and AlterNet Media, Inc. against OpenAI. The suit alleged that OpenAI’s product ChatGPT infringed on the plaintiffs’ copyrights by using their news articles to train its language models without authorization and without retaining copyright attribution. The plaintiffs claimed that the removal of copyright information violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which prohibits removing copyright management information (CMI) to prevent or conceal infringement.
Judge Coleen McMahon, presiding over the case, found that the plaintiffs failed to establish Article III standing—a prerequisite to bringing their claims to federal court. The court ruled that the plaintiffs did not demonstrate a “concrete injury-in-fact” to pursue damages or injunctive relief under the DMCA. Specifically, Judge McMahon noted that the plaintiffs did not allege any “actual adverse effects” resulting from the removal of copyright information, as required by the US Supreme Court’s TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez decision, which emphasizes that harm must be real and tangible, not abstract.
The plaintiffs argued that OpenAI’s removal of CMI from their articles represented a form of property interference akin to copyright infringement. However, Judge McMahon disagreed, clarifying that the DMCA’s CMI protections were not designed to provide the same level of exclusivity as traditional copyright protections. The court also rejected the plaintiffs’ request for injunctive relief, stating that they did not demonstrate a “substantial risk” that ChatGPT would output their copyrighted articles verbatim in response to user queries. The judge further remarked that OpenAI’s massive training sets contain vast amounts of data from countless sources, making the likelihood of replicating any specific article low.
The dismissal also emphasized that the plaintiffs’ underlying grievance appeared to center on OpenAI’s use of their articles without compensation. Judge McMahon dismissed the case in its entirety but allowed the plaintiffs the option to refile with an amended complaint if they could substantiate a cognizable injury.
Artificial intelligence has become the subject of legal controversy in recent years. The EU passed its first-ever AI regulation act in March. Last year, China released a draft law requiring new AI products to undergo security assessments. Canada launched a national investigation into ChatGPT’s use of personal information in 2023. Italy outright banned the technology that same year. ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman has called on the US Senate to regulate AI platforms like ChatGPT.
