The Center for Investigative Reporting Inc. v. OpenAI Court Filing, retrieved on June 27, 2024, is part of HackerNoon’s Legal PDF Series. You can jump to any part in this filing here. This part is 2 of 18.
PARTIES
12. The Center for Investigative Reporting, Inc. is the nation’s oldest nonprofit investigative newsroom. It is the product of a merger between Mother Jones, founded in 1976 by the esteemed author Adam Hochschild, publishing executive Richard Parker, and others; and the Center for Investigative Reporting, founded in 1977 by three esteemed investigative news reporters, Lowell Bergman, Dan Noyes, and David Weir. CIR has evolved to a diversified multimedia nonprofit organization that reaches millions of listeners, and readers producing on all three major platforms—audio, video and print—to produce investigative stories. CIR runs, inter alia, the brands Mother Jones, Reveal and CIR Studios.
13. Mother Jones is a reader-supported news magazine and website known for groundbreaking investigative and in-depth journalism on issues of national and global significance. Since its start in 1976, Mother Jones has won many awards for its reporting, illustration, photography, videos, and social media. Since 2001, it has been selected a finalist for the prestigious National Magazine Award for General Excellence 11 times, winning on three occasions.
14. Reveal produces investigative journalism for the Reveal national public radio show and the Reveal podcast. Its radio show is listened to by millions of public radio listeners around the country and nearly 3 million podcast listeners every month. Reveal also operates an online news site. Reveal has received countless awards for its investigatory reporting, including multiple George Foster Peabody Awards, George Polk awards, Emmy awards, Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, IRE Awards, and Edward R. Murrow Awards and has been a finalist for various other awards, including the Pulitzer Prize.
15. The Center for Investigative Reporting, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) California corporation headquartered in San Francisco, CA with offices in New York, NY, and Washington, DC.
16. Defendants are the organizations responsible for the creation, training, marketing, and sale of ChatGPT AI products.
17. Some of the Defendants consist of interrelated OpenAI entities, referred to herein collectively as the OpenAI Defendants. These include the following:
18. OpenAI Inc. is a Delaware nonprofit corporation with a principal place of business in San Francisco, CA.
19. OpenAI OpCo LLC is a Delaware limited liability company with a principal place of business in San Francisco, CA. OpenAI OpCo LLC is the sole member of OpenAI, LLC. Previously, OpenAI OpCo was known as OpenAI LP.
20. OpenAI GP, LLC is a Delaware limited liability company with a principal place of business in San Francisco, CA. It is the general partner of OpenAI OpCo and controls OpenAI OpCo.
21. OpenAI, LLC is a Delaware limited liability company with a principal place of business in San Francisco, CA. It owns some of the services or products operated by OpenAI.
22. OpenAI Global LLC is a Delaware limited liability company with a principal place of business in San Francisco, CA. Its members are OAI Corporation LLC and Microsoft Corporation.
23. OAI Corporation, LLC is a Delaware limited liability company with a principal place of business in San Francisco, CA. Its sole member is OpenAI Holdings, LLC.
24. OpenAI Holdings, LLC is a Delaware limited liability company with a principal place of business in San Francisco, CA. Its sole members are OpenAI, Inc. and Aestas Corporation.
25. Microsoft Corporation is a Washington corporation with a principal place of business and headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
26. Microsoft has described itself as being in partnership with OpenAI. In a 2023 interview, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that “ChatGPT and GPT family of models … is something that we’ve been partnered with OpenAI deeply now for multiple years.”[1]
27. This tight-knit relationship is also borne out financially. Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI Global LLC and will own a 49% stake in the company after its investment has been repaid.
28. Microsoft also provides the data center and bespoke supercomputing infrastructure used to train ChatGPT, which it created in collaboration with, and exclusively for, the OpenAI Defendants. It also offers to the public its own AI product called Copilot that is powered by OpenAI’s GPT models.
29. In a 2023 interview, Microsoft’s CEO stated that, “[i]f OpenAI disappeared tomorrow,” Microsoft could still “continue the innovation” alone because, among other reasons, “we have the data, we have everything.”[2]
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[1] Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s Big Bet on AI, WSJ Podcasts (Jan. 18, 2023), //www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-big-bet-on-ai/b0636b90- 08bd-4e80-9ae3-092acc47463a.
[2] Intelligencer Staff, Satya Nadella on Hiring the Most Powerful Man in AI, Intelligencer, (Nov. 21, 2023), //nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/11/on-with-kara-swisher-satya-nadella-onhiring-sam-altman.html.
