OpenAI may have made a fatal misstep in copyright fight with news orgs
OpenAI may have made a fatal misstep in copyright fight with news orgs
OpenAI 在与新闻机构的版权之争中可能犯下了致命错误
OpenAI is facing calls for “serious sanctions” after fighting to keep news organizations from snooping through millions of logs to find evidence of users skirting their paywalls by prompting ChatGPT to regurgitate their articles. This evidence is considered among the most important to both sides, potentially either dooming OpenAI as an infringer or exonerating its chatbot technology as a transformative fair use of news sites’ content.
OpenAI 正面临要求对其施加“严厉制裁”的呼声。此前，OpenAI 一直试图阻止新闻机构查阅数百万条日志，以寻找用户通过提示 ChatGPT 抓取其文章从而绕过付费墙的证据。这些证据被双方视为至关重要，可能决定 OpenAI 是否会被判定为侵权者，或者其聊天机器人技术是否能被认定为对新闻网站内容的“转换性合理使用”。
In a sanctions motion Thursday, news organizations suing OpenAI—led by The New York Times—accused the AI firm of repeatedly lying for years to conceal evidence of infringement that could hobble OpenAI’s defense. These alleged lies were exposed when the court compelled an “ill-prepared witness,” OpenAI privacy engineer Vincent Monaco, to be re-deposed. During the subsequent April deposition, he inadvertently revealed that OpenAI misled the court for two years about the cost and burdens of searching ChatGPT logs, NYT’s filing said.
在周四提交的一份制裁动议中，以《纽约时报》为首起诉 OpenAI 的新闻机构指控这家人工智能公司多年来反复撒谎，隐瞒了可能削弱其辩护能力的侵权证据。这些所谓的谎言在法院强制要求 OpenAI 隐私工程师、一位“准备不足的证人” Vincent Monaco 重新作证时被揭露。据《纽约时报》提交的文件显示，在随后的四月证词中，他无意中透露 OpenAI 在搜索 ChatGPT 日志的成本和负担问题上误导了法院长达两年之久。
Among the most shocking revelations, OpenAI allegedly pretended from the earliest stages of the case that it did not have the technical ability to search large anonymized samples of ChatGPT logs when it had actually already conducted such searches prior to the start of litigation, NYT alleged. Sanctions are warranted because “OpenAI’s concealment of this fact withheld highly relevant evidence, prolonged discovery, inflated expenses, and burdened the Court,” news plaintiffs alleged.
《纽约时报》指控称，最令人震惊的披露之一是，OpenAI 在案件初期就假装其没有技术能力搜索 ChatGPT 日志的大规模匿名样本，而实际上它在诉讼开始前就已经进行过此类搜索。原告方认为制裁是合理的，因为“OpenAI 对这一事实的隐瞒扣留了高度相关的证据，延长了取证过程，增加了费用，并给法院造成了负担。”
Asked for comment, an OpenAI spokesperson suggested that NYT’s sanctions motion was a late litigation effort to access more logs and infringe more users’ privacy. The spokesperson claimed that when the NYT recently dropped some claims in the lawsuit, it was a sign that news plaintiffs’ case was crumbling, not OpenAI’s defense.
在被要求置评时，OpenAI 发言人表示，《纽约时报》的制裁动议是其在诉讼后期试图获取更多日志并侵犯更多用户隐私的行为。该发言人声称，当《纽约时报》最近撤回诉讼中的部分诉求时，这表明新闻原告方的案件正在瓦解，而非 OpenAI 的辩护防线。
“As the Times’ case weakens and they’ve been forced to drop claims against us, they’re persisting with their efforts to invade the privacy of people who have nothing to do with this case, including by making these blatantly false allegations,” OpenAI’s spokesperson said. “We’ll continue defending our users’ privacy and the long-established principles of fair use.”
“随着《纽约时报》的案件被削弱，他们被迫撤回对我们的指控，他们仍在坚持侵犯与此案无关的人的隐私，包括提出这些公然虚假的指控，” OpenAI 发言人表示。“我们将继续捍卫用户的隐私以及长期确立的合理使用原则。”
However, last month, NYT spokesperson Graham James disputed to Ars that news plaintiffs’ case was weakened by dropping claims. He suggested instead the suit was streamlined and strengthened by adding claims against Microsoft. “Our core claims remain the same from the day we filed this lawsuit—that Microsoft and OpenAI stole millions of The Times’s copyrighted works to compete with our products and illegally enrich themselves,” James said.
然而，上个月，《纽约时报》发言人 Graham James 向 Ars 反驳称，撤回诉求并未削弱原告方的案件。他认为，通过增加针对微软的诉求，诉讼反而得到了精简和加强。“我们从提起诉讼之日起的核心主张从未改变——即微软和 OpenAI 窃取了《纽约时报》数百万件受版权保护的作品，以与我们的产品竞争并非法牟利，” James 说道。
OpenAI allegedly hid 80M log sample
OpenAI 被指隐瞒了 8000 万条日志样本
Although the sanctions motion is heavily redacted, it’s alleged that Monaco testified that OpenAI had two large samples—spanning 10 million and 78 million logs—which had already been de-identified and could have been made available to news plaintiffs early on to maximize the discovery period. “Not once did OpenAI disclose the existence” of those samples over two years, news plaintiffs alleged.
尽管制裁动议经过了大量删减，但据称 Monaco 作证时表示，OpenAI 拥有两个大型样本（分别包含 1000 万和 7800 万条日志），这些样本已经过脱敏处理，本可以在早期就提供给新闻原告方，以最大化取证时间。新闻原告方指控称：“在两年多的时间里，OpenAI 从未披露过这些样本的存在。”
Even more frustrating to plaintiffs, OpenAI had already searched those samples for NYT content as part of its research into “creating a filter that could be used to block the regurgitation of copyrighted content,” the court filing said. “OpenAI was willing and able to search its output logs—when it benefitted OpenAI,” NYT alleged, accusing the ChatGPT maker of “making the discovery process as burdensome as possible.”
法庭文件显示，更令原告感到沮丧的是，OpenAI 此前为了研究“创建可用于阻止版权内容被复述的过滤器”，已经搜索过这些样本中的《纽约时报》内容。《纽约时报》指控称：“当对自己有利时，OpenAI 愿意且有能力搜索其输出日志，”并指责这家 ChatGPT 的制造商“尽可能地让取证过程变得繁琐”。
Court says OpenAI sample is “unusable”
法院称 OpenAI 提供的样本“无法使用”
In a statement to Ars, NYT’s lead counsel, Ian Crosby, suggested that OpenAI obstructed access to logs and distorted evidence to shield its fair use claims. “For over two years, OpenAI lied to The Times, The Daily News Plaintiffs, the public, and the court,” Crosby said. “It claimed searching ChatGPT outputs for copies of The Times’ and the Daily News Plaintiffs’ content was infeasible, burdensome, and invasive of users’ privacy—while at the same time concealing that it had already done such searches. If OpenAI genuinely believed that copying our clients’ journalism was fair and legal, it wouldn’t have hid the truth about having done it.”
在给 Ars 的一份声明中，《纽约时报》首席律师 Ian Crosby 表示，OpenAI 阻碍了对日志的访问并歪曲了证据，以掩盖其合理使用的主张。“两年来，OpenAI 一直在对《纽约时报》、每日新闻原告方、公众和法院撒谎，” Crosby 说。“它声称搜索 ChatGPT 输出内容以查找《纽约时报》和每日新闻原告方的内容是不可行的、繁琐的且侵犯用户隐私的——与此同时，它却隐瞒了自己已经进行过此类搜索的事实。如果 OpenAI 真诚地认为复制我们客户的新闻报道是公平且合法的，它就不会隐瞒自己已经这样做了的事实。”
Instead of being transparent about the existing samples, OpenAI forced news plaintiffs to spend eight months searching in a “sandbox,” where they could only access a heavily redacted sample of 20 million logs. That sample was much smaller than the 120 million news logs plaintiffs originally requested, allegedly narrowed due to OpenAI’s “false representations regarding its existing technical capabilities” to search larger samples.
OpenAI 没有就现有样本保持透明，而是强迫新闻原告方在“沙盒”中花费八个月进行搜索，在那里他们只能访问一个经过大量删减的 2000 万条日志样本。该样本远小于原告最初要求的 1.2 亿条新闻日志，据称是因为 OpenAI 对其搜索更大样本的“现有技术能力”进行了“虚假陈述”而被迫缩减的。
“This representation is belied by Mr. Monaco’s testimony that OpenAI already had the ability” to search “large datasets, such as the more than 80 million output logs,” NYT alleged. The 20 million log sample was further “skewed” when OpenAI used AI to make 19 billion redactions to the sample—so many that the court found the sample “unusable.”
《纽约时报》指控称：“Monaco 先生的证词反驳了这一陈述，他表示 OpenAI 早已具备搜索‘大型数据集（例如超过 8000 万条输出日志）’的能力。” 当 OpenAI 使用人工智能对该样本进行了 190 亿次删减后，这 2000 万条日志样本进一步被“扭曲”了——删减次数之多，以至于法院认为该样本“无法使用”。
Eventually, OpenAI removed some of the redactions, but “even then, a large number of redactions remain, including to News Plaintiffs’ domains, names, and other fields, which has hampered News Plaintiffs’ searches over the data,” NYT alleged. Meanwhile, “the entire time that OpenAI was engaging in the improper over-redaction of this sample, it had in its possession a sample of 78 million conversations that had already been de-identified,” NYT alleged.
最终，OpenAI 取消了部分删减，但《纽约时报》指控称：“即便如此，仍有大量内容被删减，包括新闻原告方的域名、名称和其他字段，这阻碍了新闻原告方对数据的搜索。” 与此同时，《纽约时报》还指控称：“在 OpenAI 对该样本进行不当过度删减的整个过程中，它手中其实掌握着一份已经过脱敏处理的 7800 万条对话样本。”