OpenAI Restricts the Use of its Products in the Election; New Class Action Against OpenAI

By‎ Adv. Haim Ravia

Partner, Chair of the Cyber, Privacy & Copyright Group at Pearl Cohen Zedek Latzer Baratz

By‎ Adv. Dotan Hammer

Partner at the Cyber, Privacy & Copyright Group, Pearl Cohen Zedek Latzer Baratz

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OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT and DALL-E, has implemented a new election policy imposing restrictions on the use of its products for political purposes ahead of the 2024 U.S. election. This decision aims to prevent the misuse of OpenAI’s tools for political manipulation, including the spread of disinformation, fake news, and misleading images or videos that could adversely influence voters.

OpenAI’s new election policy includes:

  • Prohibition on using AI for political campaign purposes.
  • Prohibition on impersonating candidates, governments, and authorities.
  • Prohibition on any activity that may discourage voters from voting.

OpenAI will also take several affirmative steps to combat voter fraud, including:

  • Providing a dedicated link, operated by the National Association of Secretaries of State, containing all relevant information to address voter inquiries.
  • Preventing the dissemination of websites and applications that could negatively impact elections.
  • Assisting voters in assessing content credibility by providing links to reliable reports and updates from reputable news sources.
  • Disclosing to users whether content was generated by OpenAI’s technology.

Separately, a new lawsuit was filed against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging the unlawful copying and use of copyrighted works for GPT training. The lawsuit alleges that copyrighted works were used to train GPT, the model powering ChatGPT, and seeks class-action status. Filed by two journalists in a federal court in New York, the complaint comes just weeks after a similar lawsuit was filed by The New York Times, accusing the companies of unlawfully copying millions of articles from the newspaper for GPT training.

The plaintiffs allege that OpenAI previously admitted that it used the model’s training data from pirated e-book databases, including the works of the plaintiffs. However, they claim that OpenAI intentionally continued to use these works without obtaining proper authorization from the copyright holders.

The lawsuit indicates that after The New York Times filed its lawsuit, OpenAI publicly declared its commitment to respecting the rights of copyright holders and acknowledged the need to compensate them to ensure fair use of artificial intelligence technology and new revenue streams. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit seek to represent a group of authors whose works were systematically copied by OpenAI. Among other remedies, the plaintiffs have asked for compensation of up to $150,000 for each copied work and a permanent injunction to cease unauthorized copying.

Click here to read OpenAI’s Usage Policies.

Click here to read the class action complaint against OpenAI and Microsoft.