Wikimedia proposes a compromise position in AI copyright case: training may constitute fair use, but reproducing original text should require authorization

Wikimedia has proposed a compromise position in the AI copyright lawsuit, arguing that using copyrighted works without permission for large language model pre-training may qualify as fair use if the model's output differs from the original text, but that when chatbots directly output article content and replace readers' access to the original works, AI companies should comply with licensing requirements. Wikimedia points out that models reproduce Wikipedia text published under open licenses but do not necessarily comply with conditions such as attribution and share-alike, and it worries that if courts broadly rule that AI training is entirely unrestricted, this could open the door to ignoring licenses. The backdrop to this position is that The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023 for scraping large numbers of news articles without permission to train AI systems, with the two companies arguing that such training constitutes fair use.