The Wikimedia Foundation has weighed in on the legal battles between publishers like The New York Times and tech giants OpenAI and Microsoft. In their amicus brief filed recently, the nonprofit argued that training artificial intelligence on copyrighted material should generally be considered fair use, yet regurgitating specific articles to users should not.
Staking out a middle ground, Wikimedia believes an overly rigid legal decision could either deprive Wikipedians of useful AI tools or endanger the open internet. They contend that a victory for publishers could allow copyright holders to "gatekeep" transformative uses of their work, while a win for AI companies might encourage ignoring licensing agreements and fragmenting the flow of information.
Wikimedia emphasizes that their websites serve as critical data sources for AI training but are also subject to copyright infringement claims regarding visitors and licensing terms like Creative Commons. Despite these challenges, they acknowledge that large language models offer tangible benefits to Wikipedia, such as aiding editors in detecting vandalism and copyright violations.
General Counsel Stephen LaPorte warns that a ruling lacking nuance could threaten the sustainability of free knowledge and stifle open-source technology development. "The court needs to understand that Wikipedia is created through a collaborative process that requires a strong foundation of open and accessible human knowledge to thrive," he stated.
While The New York Times argues that OpenAI infringed on copyright by scraping its site, OpenAI and Microsoft defend their practices as fair use, dismissing regurgitation as a rare bug. Microsoft noted that their Copilot model rarely reproduces full sentences from news content, which they believe supports its transformative purpose.
Wikimedia proposes a compromise: training on websites should not be infringement, and pre-training LLMs is fair use if the output is "something new and different." However, if models deliver copies of material that supplant readers' engagement with the original work, a license is required. This ensures that AI companies respect licensing requirements, which for Wikipedia means crediting sources and adhering to Creative Commons terms.
Wikimedia CEO Bernadette Meehan highlighted the organization's goal to defend free and open human knowledge. She stated, "Expanding access to knowledge through AI is a powerful goal, but it must respect the people, contributors, and communities that make reliable knowledge possible."
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