In December 2023, The New York Times sued OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, accusing the company of copyright infringement. Now, OpenAI is fighting back, asking The Times to prove that its articles were created by humans and are truly original.

The New York Times initiated legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023, alleging that the companies used The Times’ extensive archive of articles to train the ChatGPT language model without proper authorization. The newspaper claims that this use of its content constitutes a violation of copyright laws.

In response to The Times’ lawsuit, OpenAI’s legal team filed a request on Monday seeking to compel the newspaper to provide evidence that their articles are “original, human-authored content.” OpenAI’s request includes demands for “underlying reporter’s notes, interview memos, records of materials cited, or other ‘files’ for each asserted work,” though they have assured that confidential information such as sources’ names will not be requested.

On Wednesday, The New York Times filed a response to OpenAI’s request, describing it as a tactic for “harassment and retaliation” against the newspaper’s decision to file the lawsuit. The Times argues that OpenAI’s demands for extensive documentation are unprecedented and overly broad, exceeding the scope of acceptable discovery under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

The Times contends that “OpenAI is not entitled to unbounded discovery into nearly 100 years of underlying reporters’ files,” emphasizing that the request serves no purpose other than to harass and retaliate against The Times for pursuing legal action. They argue that OpenAI’s request is inconsistent with legal precedents and unnecessary for the resolution of the copyright dispute.