IGN and CNET owner Ziff Davis sues OpenAI
Ziff Davis, the owner of several digital outlets like CNET, PCMag, IGN, and Everyday Health, is suing OpenAI over claims of copyright infringement, as first reported by The New York Times. In the lawsuit, the digital media company accuses OpenAI of “intentionally and relentlessly” creating “exact copies” of its outlets’ works without permission. The company also alleges that OpenAI trained its AI models on its work despite Ziff Davis instructing web crawlers not to scrape its data using a robots.txt file, adding that OpenAI allegedly removed copyright information from the content it sucks up.
Ziff Davis currently owns more than 45 media brands and has over 3,800 employees, making it one of the biggest publishers to sue OpenAI so far. In the lawsuit, the company said it publishes nearly 2 million new articles every year, and averages over 292 million user visits each month.
Some outlets, including The Verge parent company Vox Media, The Associated Press, The Atlantic, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, have signed content licensing agreements with OpenAI. However, Ziff Davis is joining The New York Times, The Intercept, Raw Story, AlterNet, and a group of Canadian media companies on the list of those suing OpenAI over copyright infringement.
Ziff Davis alleges that OpenAI has “copied, reproduced, and stored” its outlets’ work, which it uses to create responses in ChatGPT. “Ziff Davis has identified hundreds of full copies of the body text of Ziff Davis Works in merely the small sample of OpenAI’s WebText dataset that it made publicly available,” the company claims.
Ziff Davis is asking the court to stop OpenAI from “exploiting” its works, as well as to destroy any dataset or models containing its content.
“ChatGPT helps enhance human creativity, advance scientific discovery and medical research, and enable hundreds of millions of people to improve their daily lives,” OpenAI spokesperson Jason Deutrom said in a statement to The Verge. “Our models empower innovation, and are trained on publicly available data and grounded in fair use.” Ziff Davis declined to comment.
Ziff Davis, the owner of several digital outlets like CNET, PCMag, IGN, and Everyday Health, is suing OpenAI over claims of copyright infringement, as first reported by The New York Times. In the lawsuit, the digital media company accuses OpenAI of “intentionally and relentlessly” creating “exact copies” of its outlets’…
Recent Posts
- ‘Elon Musk said he thinks humanoid robots will be in many homes in three years, and I agree with him.’ I sat down with Jake Dyson to hear his predictions for AI and robotics in your home — and why you shouldn’t throw out your stick vac just yet
- LaCie 8big Pro5 review: I tested LaCie’s huge 256TB DAS solution, and it’s ideal for 8K video editing but it comes with a price tag that’s just as big
- EA’s Star Wars Zero Company drops August 27
- Buying your dad a tech gift or gadget for Father’s Day? You may want to wait until Prime Day, if possible
- Which Amazon Fire Stick do I need? A simple guide to the key differences
Archives
- June 2026
- May 2026
- April 2026
- March 2026
- February 2026
- January 2026
- December 2025
- November 2025
- October 2025
- September 2025
- August 2025
- July 2025
- June 2025
- May 2025
- April 2025
- March 2025
- February 2025
- January 2025
- December 2024
- November 2024
- October 2024
- September 2024
- August 2024
- July 2024
- June 2024
- May 2024
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023