DEV Community: Mayank Vikash

The New York Times Files Lawsuit Against OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I. Usage

Mayank Vikash — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 15:46:48 +0000

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement on Wednesday. The move by one of the most prominent newspapers is the latest in several cases against GenerativeAI companies for training their AI models on the data acquired without the owner's permission. Training an AI model is a difficult and complex process read this article to learn more about it.

The New York Times claimed to be the "first major American media organisation to sue the companies over copyright issues associated with its written works."

The lawsuit, filed by the New York Times in Federal District Court in Manhattan, contends that millions of articles published by The New York Times were used to train automated chatbots that now compete with the news outlet as a source of reliable information.

The lawsuit filed by the New York Times does not include any amount written in it, as the newspaper claimed. It also added that the defendants - OpenAI and Microsoft - should be held responsible for "billions of dollars of statutory damages and actual damages." Statutory damages mean the minimum amount the law decides, which the person or company accused would have to pay if proven guilty.

The New York Times seeks money for "unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works." In the lawsuit, The New York Times also demands the companies to destroy the chatbot models and training data that uses copyrighted material from The NY Times.

In the lawsuit, American Newspaper also claims that it approached Microsoft and OpenAI in April to raise concerns about the use of intellectual property and copyrighted material. The lawsuit claimed that The New York Times wanted to be involved in a commercial agreement for the generative AI products. It also added that the talks did not come to a conclusion.

An OpenAI spokeswoman, Lindsey Held, said in a statement that the company had been “moving forward constructively” in conversations with The Times and that it was “surprised and disappointed” by the lawsuit.

“We respect the rights of content creators and owners and are committed to working with them to ensure they benefit from A.I. technology and new revenue models,” Ms. Held said. “We’re hopeful that we will find a mutually beneficial way to work together, as we are doing with many other publishers.”

Microsoft declined to comment on the case.

This year OpenAI proved to be one of the most successful companies as its generative AI products like ChatGPT helped it to attract billions of dollars of investments including from Microsoft. The New York Times accused OpenAI of using a variety of online texts, newspaper articles, poems and even screenplays to train chatbots.

OpenAI is now valued by investors at more than $80 billion. Microsoft has committed $13 billion to OpenAI and has incorporated the company’s technology into its Bing search engine.

The lawsuit accused OpenAI of using the content from The New York Times without paying the company.

“Defendants seek to free-ride on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism,” the complaint says, accusing OpenAI and Microsoft of “using The Times’s content without payment to create products that substitute for The Times and steal audiences away from it.”

This year there has been a rise in concerns about AI taking over jobs in creative fields because of its ability to mimic natural language and generate well-written responses to almost every prompt.

Microsoft has previously acknowledged potential copyright concerns over its A.I. products. In September, the company announced that if customers using its A.I. tools were hit with copyright complaints, it would indemnify them and cover the associated legal costs.

The lawsuit also declared ChatGPT and other AI tools as potential competitors in news publishing and as a source of the latest news. The newspaper expresses concern that readers will be satisfied with a response from a chatbot and decline to visit The Times’s website, thus reducing web traffic that can be translated into advertising and subscription revenue.

The complaint cites several examples when a chatbot provided users with near-verbatim excerpts from Times articles that would otherwise require a paid subscription to view. It asserts that OpenAI and Microsoft placed particular emphasis on the use of Times journalism in training their A.I. programs because of the perceived reliability and accuracy of the material.

Several media organisations have struck a deal with OpenAI which allows the tech company to license the news article for the training of its AI models. Some prominent media organisations are The Associated Press and Axel Springer, the owner of Politico and Business Insider.

The lawsuit shows the example of how Bing generates texts which are owned by The Times but do not link to the page from which the text is taken.

The outcome of the lawsuit is very significant as it can result in a law which can properly regulate this everchanging technology.

Copyrighted materials or any original materials are the result of the hard work of one or more people. Their work should respected and if it is used for training purposes, the owners should be paid well.

This case also brings up the fact that training an AI model is way harder than anyone can think. You do not only need to have a technical field but knowledge in various others like law and language for this purpose.

In conclusion, awareness should be spread among the public about this major problem. Legislators should work on formulating bills that encourage fair play in this new and awesome field, and authorities should create new methods to implement them.

Als

Microsoft has Completed the Activision Blizzard Deal

Mayank Vikash — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 17:58:55 +0000

After almost twenty months, the Internet Giant Microsoft has completed its deal to acquire Activision Blizzard for 69 billion dollars.

The deal took this long because of the restrictions from the authorities of the Western countries mainly the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union. The parliament and lawmakers of these countries were arguing that Microsoft would end the competition in the gaming industries after acquiring one of the most popular game studios, Activision Blizzard.

Activision Blizzard is a gaming holding company that owns Activision -the publisher of Call of Duty, - Blizzard Entertainment, and King - the publisher of Candy Crush. The company is based in Santa Monica, United States and was valued at around 72 billion dollars in 2021.

Microsoft completed the deal today, on 13th October 2023 and now owns the rights to titles like Diablo, Call of Duty, Candy Crush Saga, Warcraft and Spyro the Dragon.

The United States and the European Union authorities had already given their approval for the deal long back. The only hurdle was the Competition and Market Authority of the United Kingdom.

The Competition and Market Authority argued that Microsoft will make popular Activision titles like Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox, which will affect the market of Sony’s PlayStation. After Microsoft assured the UK regulators that it is not going to make any of the games exclusive to Xbox anytime soon, the Competition And Market Authority gave the clean cheat to the deal on Friday.

“We now have all regulatory approvals necessary to close and we look forward to bringing joy and connection to even more players around the world,” Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said in a statement to employees.

“We delivered a clear message to Microsoft that the deal would be blocked unless they comprehensively addressed our concerns and stuck to our guns on that,” CMA chief Sarah Cardell said. “With the sale of Activision’s cloud streaming rights to Ubisoft, we’ve made sure Microsoft can’t have a stranglehold over this important and rapidly developing market.”

The gaming industry is valued at around 250 billion US dollars and is expected to reach around 600 billion US dollars by 2023. Microsoft already holds a big share of this market and along with other big players, the market for small and new game developers is less than 10 per cent, which is going to reduce. Activision also made a deal with Ubisoft to sell its cloud gaming rights.

Mergers are acquisitions are good, but they usually kill innovations and there is no chance for new companies. Let us explain it with an example. Take a few companies A, B, C and D. All companies make games according to their definite style and suited for their targeted audience. Now, company A acquires company B and company C. Company A will adopt the styles of making games of the other two companies, but it will mostly make games according to its style as the higher ranking employees would usually be from company A. Also, the previous market share was divided equally among the four companies which is 25% each. Now, company A controls 75% of the market share, so it has now monopoly. Company A can set the prizes of the titles according to its wishes and the people who play those titles have nothing else to do but buy them.

In conclusion, mergers are not a bad thing, but monopoly is. The authorities need to intervene in deals like these as companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft already control almost everything we do on the internet.

China bans US chip manufacturer

Mayank Vikash — Sat, 27 May 2023 01:19:22 +0000

Chinese authorities have recently banned the American chip manufacturer Micron Technology, Inc. Cyberspacespace Administration of China made the decision.

The cyberspace regulator announced on Sunday, 21st May 2023, that America’s biggest memory chips manufacturer Micron poses “serious network security risks”.

The ban on Micron by China is one of the biggest ironies of 2023. China takes serious action when it thinks there is a violation of its national security and sovereignty, but what about other countries? In Chinese diplomacy, sending troops to other countries areas is not a violation of its territorial integrity, using social apps to collect data from rival countries is not a violation of their privacy and sending spy balloons to other countries’ airspace is not a violation of their national security.

Micron Technology, Inc is an American microchip and storage devices manufacturer based in Boise, Idaho.

The firm will see a significant impact on its revenue after its product ban in the second largest economy.

China is one of the biggest markets for Micron. The company generated around 10% of its annual sales. In 2022, Micron reported total revenue of $30.7bn (£24.6bn), of which $3.3bn came from mainland China.

The Cyberspace Administration of China said, “The review found that Micron’s products have serious network security risks, which pose significant security risks to China’s critical information infrastructure supply chain, affecting China’s national security”, in a statement.

It did not state what risks Micron poses or provide evidence to support its claims.

The ban on Micron is the latest development in the deepening rivalry between Bejing and Washington.

The US regulators have opposed the decision by Chinese authorities.

“We firmly oppose restrictions that have no basis. This action, along with recent raids and targeting of other American firms, is inconsistent with [China’s] assertions that it is opening its markets and committed to a transparent regulatory framework,” a US Commerce Department spokesperson said.

Chinese authorities have banned Micron from selling its products to firms handling critical information and technology.

Micron primarily provided chips for smartphones and computers in China. They do not pose any risks to China’s national security, and there is no evidence from China to back its claims. This ban, out of many, is an indirect warning to Western countries while they have gathered for the Group of Seven (G7) summit.

What may be the potential reason?
The US is taking every step to prevent China from controlling the supply chain of Semiconductor Technology. The supply chain includes the manufacturing of advanced semiconductors chips to their sales throughout the world.

Currently, Taiwan’s TSMC is the largest manufacturer of advanced silicon ships. China depends on TSMC for it 70% of its chip imports.

The US Government has restricted American companies from providing critical technologies to China. It has also asked the allies to do so.

The US Government has also restricted the sales of advanced chips to China. This step prevents China from making more advanced military equipment, notably drones and naval ships. China has yet to develop advanced semiconductor technologies and is far behind the US.

China produces semiconductors in large quantities, but it lacks the critical technology of advanced chips. India has fewer manufacturing plants than China, but that didn’t stop it from technologies that catch China.

Indian Government is working to set up new manufacturing plants. India plans to be a semiconductor hub and a key player in the supply. The US and other Western nations, including Japan, South Korea and European Union, are supporting India with foreign direct investments of over $25 billion to prevent China from controlling the supply chain.

Now back to the main question, why China banned Micron just a day after the G7 summit in Japan, which India too attended as a special guest?

China and the Ukraine war were the main focus of this year’s G7 summit. China is becoming a concern for the G7 since its rivalry with the US is increasing.

The G7 nations, in a joint statement this year, criticized China for its economic coercion, debt traps and violating the sovereignty of other countries.

China did not like this. The ban on Micron is probably a message to the US and Taiwan that China is becoming independent in semiconductor technology and chip manufacturing. China dreams of controlling the supply chain of silicon chips, but is it even capable of fulfilling its own need for silicon chips? The answer at present is no, but not for a long time.

China is investing billions of dollars to develop its semiconductor industry. It is a big concern for the US as China could use its dominance in the semiconductor market for economic benefits, as it is using its supremacy over most of the crucial supply chain now to put pressure on Japan, Australia and even the US and European Union.

The solution? The US can use India’s skilled engineers and inexpensive lands to produce advanced silicon microchips. India is the best option if the US wants to counter the rising China. It is safer to let India dominate the supply chain of critical technologies.