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Executive Chairman and CEO of Microsoft Corporation Satya Nadella attends a session during the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 16, 2024. 

Denis Balibouse | Reuters

Microsoft is accusing The New York Times of “unsubstantiated” claims in the publisher’s lawsuit filed in December against OpenAI, a case that could have major implications for the future of generative artificial intelligence.

In a motion to dismiss part of the suit on Monday, Microsoft said the Times presented a false narrative of “doomsday futurology” in which OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot will decimate the news business. In the opening line of its argument to the court, Microsoft compares the lawsuit to Hollywood’s resistance to the VCR, which was created in the last 1970s and allowed users to record television programs.

“In this case, The New York Times uses its might and its megaphone to challenge the latest profound technological advance: the Large Language Model,” attorneys for Microsoft wrote. Microsoft is OpenAI’s largest investor, having pumped about $13 billion into the startup.

The filing marks the latest salvo in the battle between OpenAI and the media industry, which is increasingly concerned that AI models are being trained on valuable content that’s been produced over many decades. In its lawsuit, the Times accused OpenAI and Microsoft of copyright infringement and abusing the newspaper’s intellectual property in training LLMs.

OpenAI previously asked a judge to dismiss parts of The New York Times‘ lawsuit against it, alleging that the publisher “paid someone to hack OpenAI’s products,” such as ChatGPT, to generate 100 examples of copyright infringement for its case. OpenAI claimed it took the Times “tens of thousands of attempts to generate the highly anomalous results,” and that the company did so using “deceptive prompts that blatantly violate OpenAI’s terms of use.”

In the latest filing, Microsoft’s lawyers argue that, “content used to train LLMs does not supplant the market for the works, it teaches the models language.”

A New York Times spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Since releasing ChatGPT to the public in late 2022, OpenAI has become one of the hottest startups on the planet, with a valuation reportedly over $80 billion.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, during a panel session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 18, 2024.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

OpenAI has recently acknowledged that it’s “impossible” to train top AI models without copyrighted works.

“Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression—including blog posts, photographs, forum posts, scraps of software code, and government documents—it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials,” OpenAI wrote in a filing last month in the U.K., in response to an inquiry from the U.K. House of Lords.

As recently as January, in Davos, Switzerland, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he was “surprised” by the Times’ lawsuit, saying OpenAI’s models didn’t need to train on the publisher’s data.

“We actually don’t need to train on their data,” Altman said at an event organized by Bloomberg in Davos. “I think this is something that people don’t understand. Any one particular training source, it doesn’t move the needle for us that much.”

OpenAI has struck deals with Axel Springer, the German media conglomerate that owns Business Insider, Morning Brew and other outlets, and is also reportedly in talks with CNN, Fox Corp. and Time to license their work.

— CNBC’s Sam Meredith contributed to this report.

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Elon Musk’s X loses lawsuit against Bright Data over data scraping

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May 10, 2024

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Elon Musk's X loses lawsuit against Bright Data over data scraping

Tesla CEO Elon Musk

Omar Marques | Getty Images

A federal judge in California dismissed a lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s X against Israel’s Bright Data, in a case that involved the scraping of public online data and its appropriate uses.

X, formerly Twitter, sued Bright Data, alleging the company “scrapes data from X” and sells it “using elaborate technical measures to evade X Corp.’s anti-scraping technology.” X also claimed the company violated its terms of service and copyright.

Data scraping occurs when automated programs scour publicly accessible websites to collect data, which can later be used for a wide range of purposes, including training artificial intelligence models and targeting online ads. The practice is generally legal in the U.S. when it involves scraping publicly accessible data, according to a 2022 ruling that capped off an extended legal battle involving LinkedIn.

X was previously seeking more than $1 million in damages from unknown defendants over “unlawfully scraping data associated with Texas residents,” according to a suit that was filed in Dallas County.

In dismissing the complaint, Judge William Alsup wrote, “X Corp. wants it both ways: to keep its safe harbors yet exercise a copyright owner’s right to exclude, wresting fees from those who wish to extract and copy X users’ content.”

Giving social networks complete control over the collection and use of public web data “risks the possible creation of information monopolies that would disserve the public interest,” the judge wrote. He added that X was not “looking to protect X users’ privacy,” and was “happy to allow the extraction and copying of X users’ content so long as it gets paid.”

A representative for X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Meta previously filed a complaint against Bright Data and was similarly unsuccessful.

Bright Data said in an emailed statement that its victories against Meta and X show that public information online “belongs to all of us, and any attempt to deny the public access will fail.”

“What is happening now is unprecedented, the implications impact general business, research, AI and beyond,” the company said.

Bright Data says it only scrapes publicly available data that’s visible to anyone without a login. At the time of the suit’s filing, X made the information Bright Data scraped available to anyone.

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Climate protesters try to break into Tesla’s Germany factory, multiple people arrested

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May 10, 2024

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Climate protesters try to break into Tesla's Germany factory, multiple people arrested

Police confront environmental activists in a forest near the Tesla Gigafactory electric car factory near Gruenheide, Germany, May 10, 2024.

Axel Schmidt | Getty Images

Climate protesters angry about Tesla’s plans to expand its Berlin-Brandenburg Gigafactory in Germany tried to break into the plant on Friday, according to a statement from local police.

“Multiple unauthorized people are trying to enter the ground of the Tesla factory,” Brandenburg police said via X Friday. “We are in the process of preventing this.”

“The situation is dynamic,” a Brandenburg police spokesperson told CNBC Friday, adding that there have been multiple roadblocks in the area due to the demonstrations.

A Tesla spokesperson was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

Since Monday, a camp has been set up near the Tesla grounds at its Brandenburg plant, with participation increasing since Wednesday and peaking on a German bank holiday Thursday, police said.

Police confront environmental activists in a forest near Tesla’s German Gigafactory, May 10, 2024.

Axel Schmidt | Getty Images

Protest gatherings were planned for Friday, one stationary near the Tesla factory grounds and another involving a procession from the camp, the Brandenburg police spokesperson told CNBC.

However, disruptions ensued, including attempts to breach the Tesla premises and sit-in blockades on roads, leading to roadblocks, the spokesperson said.

Protesters also occupied a nearby airfield in the Neuhardenberg municipality, lighting pyrotechnics and blocking access roads, according to the police.

Police intervened, leading to multiple arrests and instances of force. The police operation involved support from neighboring states and national forces, the spokesperson added.

CNN reported on Wednesday that Tesla asked its workers to stay home rather than come into the factory Friday due to concerns over the protests surrounding its Brandenburg plant.

André Thierig, a senior manufacturing director at the Tesla factory, confirmed via X on Tuesday that the electric car maker was shuttering production Friday in a “one-day planned production shutdown.”

Tesla is pursuing a major expansion for its battery and car assembly factory in Brandenburg, Germany, about 32 miles south of Berlin.

Police officers guard an access road to the Neuhardenberg airfield. Tesla vehicles produced at the Grünheide plant are temporarily stored on the airfield site.

Patrick Pleul | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

Tesla’s planned expansion includes designs for a rail freight depot and storage facilities that could help it avoid reliance on other logistics providers and avoid production pauses due to parts shortages.

Locals in February voted against authorizing the factory expansion. However, the vote was nonbinding and Tesla and local officials still intend to push ahead.

Climate protesters have expressed concerns about Tesla’s plans, which entail cutting down approximately 250 acres of forest in a rural community of fewer than 8,000 residents near a nature conservation area.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has previously lashed out at protesters targeting Tesla’s German Gigafactory, saying on X in March they’re “either the dumbest eco-terrorists on Earth or they’re puppets of those who don’t have good environmental goals.”

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report

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Sam Altman takes nuclear energy company Oklo public to help power his AI ambitions

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May 10, 2024

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Sam Altman takes nuclear energy company Oklo public to help power his AI ambitions

On Friday, advanced nuclear fission company Oklo, for which Sam Altman serves as chairman, started trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The company, which has yet to generate any revenue, went public through a special purpose acquisition company called AltC Acquisition Corp., founded and led by Altman.

Under the ticker symbol “OKLO,” shares were trading at just above $15 on Friday morning. Oklo was set to receive more than $306 million in gross proceeds upon closing the transaction, according to a release.

Oklo’s business model is based on commercializing nuclear fission, the reaction that fuels all nuclear power plants. Instead of conventional reactors, the company aims to use mini nuclear reactors housed in A-frame structures. Its goal is to sell the energy to end users such as the U.S. Air Force and big tech companies.

Oklo is currently working to build its first small-scale reactor in Idaho, which could eventually power the types of data centers that OpenAI and other artificial intelligence companies need to run their AI models and services.

Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, has said he sees nuclear energy as one of the best ways to solve the problem of growing demand for AI, and the energy that powers the technology, without relying on fossil fuels. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have also invested in nuclear plants in recent years.

“I don’t see a way for us to get there without nuclear,” Altman told CNBC in 2023. “I mean, maybe we could get there just with solar and storage. But from my vantage point, I feel like this is the most likely and the best way to get there.”

In an interview with CNBC Thursday, Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte confirmed that the company has yet to generate revenue and has no nuclear plants deployed at the moment. He said the company is targeting 2027 for its first plant to come online.

Going the SPAC route is risky. So-called reverse mergers became popular in the low-interest rate days of 2020 and 2021 when tech valuations were soaring and investors were looking for growth over profit. But the SPAC market collapsed in 2022 alongside rising rates and hasn’t recovered.

AI-related companies, on the other hand, are the new darlings of Wall Street.

“SPACs haven’t exactly had the best performances in the past couple of years, so for us to have sort of the outcome that we’ve had here is obviously a function of the work we put in, but also what we’re building and also the fact that the market sees the opportunity sets here,” said DeWitte, who co-founded the company in 2013. “I think it’s very promising on multiple fronts for [the] nuclear, AI, data center push, as well as the energy transition piece.”

The company has seen its fair share of regulatory setbacks. In 2022, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission denied Oklo’s application for an Idaho reactor. The company has been working on a new application, which it isn’t aiming to submit to the NRC until early next year, DeWitte said, adding that it’s currently in the “pre-application engagement” stage with the commission.

Altman got involved with Oklo while president of the startup incubator Y Combinator. Oklo went into the program in 2014 after an earlier meeting between Altman and DeWitte. In 2015, Altman invested in the company and became chairman.

It’s not Altman’s only foray into nuclear energy or other infrastructure that could power large-scale AI growth.

In 2021, Altman led a $500 million funding round in clean energy firm Helion, which is working to develop and commercialize nuclear fusion. Helion said in a blog post at the time that the capital would go toward its electricity demonstration generator, Polaris, “which we expect to demonstrate net electricity from fusion in 2024.”

Altman didn’t respond to a request for comment.

In recent years, Altman has also poured money into chip endeavors and investments that could help power the AI tools OpenAI builds.

Just before his brief ouster as OpenAI CEO in November, he was reportedly seeking billions of dollars for a chip venture codenamed “Tigris” to eventually compete with Nvidia.

Altman in 2018 invested in AI chip startup Rain Neuromorphics, based near OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters. The next year, OpenAI signed a letter of intent to spend $51 million on Rain’s chips. In December, the U.S. compelled a Saudi Aramco-backed venture capital firm to sell its shares in Rain.

DeWitte told CNBC that the data center represents “a pretty exciting opportunity.”

“What we’ve seen is there’s a lot of interest with AI, specifically,” he said. “AI compute needs are significant. It opens the door for a lot of different approaches in terms of how people think about designing and developing AI infrastructure.”

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