Disney, The New York Times and CNN are among a dozen major media companies blocking access to ChatGPT as they wage a cold war on A.I.
News organizations are in a cold war with OpenAI.
While a shot has yet to be fired, some of the nation’s largest newsrooms are actively taking defensive measures to safeguard their content from ChatGPT, the groundbreaking artificial intelligence chatbot that is seen as a potential aggressor to an already struggling news industry.
A multitude of leading newsrooms have recently injected code into their websites that blocks OpenAI’s web crawler, GPTBot, from scanning their platforms for content. The Guardian’s Ariel Bogle reported last week that CNN, The New York Times, and Reuters had blocked GPTBot. But a Reliable Sources review has found several additional news and media giants have also quietly taken this step, including Disney, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Axios, Insider, ABC News, ESPN, and the Gothamist, among others. Publishers such as Condé Nast, Hearst, and Vox Media, which all house several prominent publications, have also taken the defensive measure.
Despite the posturing behind the scenes, none of the outlets that have taken the preventive measure of blocking GPTBot offered an on-the-record response when I reached out for comment on Monday. But the move to insert code disallowing OpenAI from drawing on their large libraries of content to train its ever-learning ChatGPT bot reflects the degree to which news organizations are spooked by the company’s technology and are quietly working to address it.
Danielle Coffey, president and chief executive of the News Media Alliance, told me on Monday that news organizations are indeed alarmed by the rapidly advancing technology. Coffey said that the News Media Alliance, which represents nearly 2,000 publishers in the US, believes newsrooms “are on solid legal ground when it comes to copyright protections.” Nevertheless, they’re apprehensive about how companies like OpenAI might further upend the already embattled news sector.
News organizations are in a cold war with OpenAI. While a shot has yet to be fired, some of the nation’s largest newsrooms are actively taking defensive measures to safeguard their content from ChatGPT, the groundbreaking artificial intelligence chatbot that is seen as a potential aggressor to an already struggling news industry. A multitude of…