Gracenote sues OpenAI for copyright infringement over metadata used in AI training

Metadata company Gracenote is the latest to sue OpenAI for copyright infringement

AI companies have been spending a lot of time in court arguing copyright cases over the past year and the latest plaintiff is Gracenote, the metadata company owned by Nielsen. Axios reports that Gracenote is suing OpenAI for the unauthorized and unpaid use of both its metadata and its framework for connecting that information. Gracenote specializes in entertainment metadata, creating descriptions and identifiers for content that clients such as TV providers use to help their own customers with discovery. Most of the lawsuits against AI businesses have focused on the content used to train LLMs, but the Gracenote case brings an extra layer with the alleged infringement of the structure or sequence for a dataset in addition to the actual data. "Defendants could have paid Gracenote to license its valuable Gracenote Data. Or they could have sought to train and ground their models only on information in the public domain. They did neither. Defendants instead improperly copied and used Gracenote Data to create their own commercially valuable AI products, all without paying a dime," the complaint states. The company claims that its previous attempts to work with OpenAI for a licensing agreement were rebuffed or ignored. Gracenote has recently inked deals to back AI ventures from other companies, including Samsung and Google.

Scoop: Nielsen's Gracenote sues OpenAI for copyright infringement

Why it matters: Gracenote is suing OpenAI not just for using its metadata without authorization or compensation, but also for copying the relational framework it uses to connect its metadata, which is in part what makes the data valuable to its enterprise clients and useful for consumers. * To date, there hasn't been a major media copyright lawsuit that focuses on the theft of a proprietary sequence or structure behind a dataset. * This lawsuit could set a new precedent for how data providers, in the media industry and outside of it, protect their intellectual property. Zoom in: The complaint, filed by Susman Godfrey lawyers on behalf of Nielsen's Gracenote in the Southern District of New York, alleges OpenAI copied and used Gracenote's data for its large language models that support lucrative products like ChatGPT. * The plaintiffs argue outputs from OpenAI's products contain and generate exact copies of Gracenote's data and relational framework, which includes human-curated and analyzed sets of entertainment metadata across music, video and sports. * The complaint alleges the unauthorized use of that data and the relational framework that connects it -- both of which are copyright protected -- threaten Gracenote's core business with media content distributors, such as smart TV providers. * Those providers could use the data and framework scraped by OpenAI to build their own "substitutive, competing media metadata products and platforms, all without permission or compensation to Gracenote," it reads. How it works: Gracenote employs hundreds of editors who use human insight and judgment to create millions of narrative descriptions, original video descriptors, unique identifiers and other program identifiers that TV providers and other clients can use to help customers discover content. * For example, Gracenote editors described HBO's "Game of Thrones" as "the depiction of two power families -- kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars and honest men -- playing a deadly game of control of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, and to sit atop the Iron Throne." * In the lawsuit, Gracenote alleges OpenAI scraped and used a near-exact copy of that descriptor when prompted by a ChatGPT user to describe "Game of Thrones." * It provides several other examples where, with minimal prompting, OpenAI's various ChatGPT models recite large portions of Gracenote's program descriptions verbatim. Between the lines: Gracenote's entire Programs Database, which includes its metadata and the proprietary relational map its editors use to connect that data, is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. * Because of those protections, the company is suing OpenAI for statutory damages, in addition to actual damages. * Statutory damages are preset amounts for specific legal violations, in this case copyright infringement. Actual damages are awarded to cover losses of a legal violation. * OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Zoom out: Gracenote's complaint is notable given the fact that the company has expressed willingness to work with AI companies, and has struck AI licensing deals with firms like Samsung and Google. * Gracenote says in its lawsuit that it reached out to discuss licensing its data to OpenAI "many times over an extended time period" but said the AI company "rebuffed or ignored every single attempt to do so." * "Being pro-AI and anti-theft aren't contradictory; they are the only sustainable path forward. We've filed suit to protect that future," Gracenote CEO Jared Grusd said in a statement. The big picture: The are many pending cases between media and information companies, and AI firms that could impact how a judge evaluates Gracenote's lawsuit and others.

Nielsen's Gracenote sues OpenAI over use of metadata in AI training

March 10 (Reuters) - Nielsen's Gracenote, which creates metadata that identifies movies, TV programs and other media, sued OpenAI in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday, alleging that its work was used without permission to train artificial intelligence. * Gracenote said in the complaint that OpenAI misused itscopyrighted material to train ChatGPT to reproduce its contentdescriptions and identifiers. * An OpenAI spokesperson said the company's AI models"empower innovation, and are trained on publicly available dataand grounded in fair use." * Gracenote CEO Jared Grusd said in a statement that OpenAI"chose to use decades of our proprietary work without permissionto build and sell its models" * Gracenote requested an unspecified amount of monetarydamages and a court order blocking OpenAI from using its data. * Gracenote said it employs more than 1,000 editors who"painstakingly source, ingest, aggregate, research, edit, write,curate, and link content" for its database of shows and movies. * The lawsuit says Gracenote was able to prompt ChatGPT tocreate copies of its identifiers and descriptions of populartelevision shows including "Breaking Bad," "Game of Thrones,""The Office" and "Saturday Night Live," indicating that OpenAIused them in its training. * Gracenote has traditionally licensed its metadata to mediadistributors. The complaint also says it licenses its materialto other AI providers for their training. It alleges thatOpenAI's use of Gracenote's content threatens to undercut bothmarkets. (Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Edmund Klamann)