Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Broadcasters KBS, MBC, and SBS have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming that ChatGPT uses their news without permission to train its AI, and they are seeking to stop the infringement and also seeking damages.
On the 23rd of February, the Korea Broadcasters Association stated, “The three terrestrial broadcasters are filing this lawsuit to hold legal responsibility for intellectual property infringement, as their news content — which constitutes their core asset and achievement — has been used in large quantities without authorization and exposed through services.”
They continued, “OpenAI is earning astronomical profits through its GPT services and is entering into paid licensing agreements with media outlets around the world for the purpose of developing and operating generative AI. The company is fully aware that it is obligated to obtain lawful and valid licenses to use news content.” They added, “Nevertheless, OpenAI has completely refused negotiations with the three broadcasters and is maintaining a discriminatory copyright policy.”
This is potentially a big deal because they’re jointly doing it, and they say it’s essentially for the sake of the industry (and arguably country’s data).
This lawsuit marks the first time the three terrestrial broadcasters have jointly filed a lawsuit against a global AI company. Through this legal action, they aim to protect the rights of creators and copyright holders and establish a fair compensation system. They explained that, considering the reality that individual creators and copyright holders face difficulties in filing lawsuits against global big tech companies due to enormous litigation costs and burdens of proof, the three broadcasters decided to respond jointly.
The association emphasized, “It cannot be justified in the name of innovation for global big tech companies, backed by massive capital and technology, to use the intellectual assets accumulated over decades by media organizations in other countries without authorization and convert them into their own commercial profits.” They also stressed that this lawsuit is directly connected to the issue of South Korea’s data sovereignty.
Of course, if you’re like me, you may be skeptical about them doing anything for the greater good, but I definitely do believe in their self-interest in wanting to protect their IP at least. That said, it’s all a bit ironic with the broadcasters using generative AI for their own content creation themselves, much less the increasing use of it by the companies and industry they presumably are aiming to protect. So sure, hopefully they win this, but wake me when they crackdown on the industry using generative AI for the same reasons they cite here.
