The New York Times isn't the only publisher, or company, saying no to OpenAI scraping its websites to help train the large language model, or LLM, that powers ChatGPT.
In August, the Times updated its terms of service to say outsiders can't scrape any of its copyrighted content to train a machine learning or AI system without permission. Like many copyright owners, the Times is justifiably concerned that chatbots like ChatGPT, Google Bard and Microsoft Bing might be trained on its work without permission or compensation. That situation has been described as the copyright "sword" hanging over AI software companies.
Now add CNN, Reuters, the Chicago Tribune and a few news sites in Australia to the list of publishers that also opted in August to block OpenAI's web crawler, known as GPTBot, from scanning their pages, The Guardian reported.
"Because intellectual property is the lifeblood of our business, it is imperative that we protect the copyright of our content," a Reuters spokesperson told The Guardian.
Why is this all happening now if the copyright owners have been concerned with Open AI and other AI companies for a while? Because in August OpenAI started letting website operators block its web crawler from slurping up information. OpenAI made that offer even as it said, "Allowing GPTBot to access your site can help AI models become more accurate and improve their general capabilities and safety."
Interestingly, it isn't just media companies that don't want to be crawled. OriginalityAI, a company The Guardian said "checks for the presence of AI content," is tracking which of the world's top 1,000 websites are blocking OpenAI's GPTBot. As of Aug. 29, the list of companies saying no includes Amazon, Shutterstock, Quora, Wikihow and Indeed.
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