OpenAI’s unveiling of its ChatGPT software in late 2022 has led to some notable conflicts and negotiations, in addition to new applications of AI to negotiation and conflict resolution. Here’s a roundup of recent AI negotiation stories in the news.
AI negotiation—and litigation
In September 2023, a group of prominent fiction writers, including John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, and George Saunders, sued OpenAI, accusing the company of using their copyrighted books and articles to train the chatbot without their permission, as reported by the New York Times. The lawsuit, filed by the Authors Guild, joined other lawsuits filed by writers against OpenAI and Meta.
Then, in December, the New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft, which has committed to investing $13 billion in OpenAI, for copyright infringement, saying that millions of Times articles had been used to train ChatGPT and other AI platforms. The Times said it tried to reach a negotiated resolution with the companies in April about their use of its intellectual property but that the talks had failed to reach a resolution. The complaint accused OpenAI and Microsoft of “using The Times’s content without payment to create products that substitute for The Times and steal audiences away from it.”
News business expert Richard Tofel told the Times that he expected many publishers, but not all, would settle such lawsuits out of courts. “A Supreme Court decision is essentially inevitable” on the use of copyrighted material in AI, he said.
OpenAI spokesperson Lindsey Held said negotiations were ongoing and that the company was “surprised and disappointed” by the lawsuit. “We’re hopeful that we will find a mutually beneficial way to work together, as we are doing with many other publishers,” Held told the Times.
Crisis negotiations at OpenAI
In November 2023, OpenAI’s board of directors forced out its CEO, Sam Altman, over leadership concerns. The firing led to “chaos” at OpenAI, the New York Times reports. The company’s president and cofounder, Greg Brockman, quit to protest Altman’s firing.
Over five days, Altman and his allies negotiated with the board for his return and also negotiated for the current board to be replaced, according to the Times. After these talks collapsed, Microsoft offered to hire Altman and Brockman to run a new AI research lab within Microsoft. Most of OpenAI’s employees signed a letter saying they were prepared to follow Altman to Microsoft.
Talks between OpenAI and its board then focused on “how to create a board that everyone could trust,” the Times reports. Ultimately, the parties reached an agreement that would include Altman’s return, new checks on his power, and an overhaul of OpenAI’s board, according to the Times.
Turf battles over AI jurisdiction
The board overhaul at OpenAI included Microsoft successfully negotiating for a nonvoting seat on the board, CNBC reports. Soon after, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) started examining Microsoft’s investment in Open AI to determine whether it violated antitrust laws, according to Bloomberg. Altman’s firing and rehiring “exposed how closely tied the two companies have become,” Bloomberg reports. “OpenAI is using Microsoft’s vast computing resources to develop its technology, and the software giant is integrating OpenAI’s services into its core businesses, including the Bing search engine,” according to Politico.
In January, the FTC and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) were in negotiations over which agency would take the lead in investigating OpenAI, including its involvement with Microsoft. According to Politico, “Neither agency is ready to relinquish jurisdiction.” Regulators are looking at whether OpenAI and Microsoft have gained unfair advantages over competition in the race to bring artificial intelligence to market.
The FTC and DOJ are also reportedly engaged in a “separate interagency debate . . . over who can investigate these companies for allegedly illegally scraping content from websites to train their AI models,” sources told Politico.
Taking AI negotiation to court?
The negotiations and legal squabbles surrounding AI highlight the uncertainty and complexity of technology negotiations. And in addition to stirring up controversy, the chatbots themselves have become negotiating partners.
Companies such as Walmart are using AI negotiation in procurement. Chatbots can offer negotiation advice to job seekers, though they have room for improvement, according to the California Management Review.
And in February 2023, technology start-up DoNotPay said it had trained the “world’s first robot lawyer” to feed legal arguments to defendants in traffic court through Bluetooth earpieces, reports New Scientist. But the company’s leaders abandoned its plan for AI negotiation after various state bar officials threatened to take them to court.
What other examples of AI negotiation have you observed in the news or in your own life lately?