The New York Times’s lawsuit comes just days after Bloomberg reported that OpenAI was talking to investors about new financing that would value it at $100bn or more.

Such a valuation would confirm the ChatGPT maker as one of the world’s most valuable startups.

A New York Times spokesperson said today:

“If Microsoft and OpenAI want to use our work for commercial purposes, the law requires that they first obtain our permission.

They have not done so.”

The US S&P 500 share index is inching towards a new alltime high.

In early trading, the benchmark stock index is up 3.36 points or almost 0.1% at 4,778.11, approaching the record high of 4796.56 points set in January 2022.

Shares in Microsoft have dipped very slightly in early Wall Street trading.

They’re down 0.2% at $373.87, having hit record highs this year due to excitement around AI.

The NYT’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft will touch on the crucial question of whether content available on the internet can be used to train artificial intelligence systems under the “fair use” legal provision.

Tech companies building generative-AI tools have generally argued that “fair use” covers their use of material on the web to develop systems such as large language models (LLMs)

In its suit, the Times said the fair use argument shouldn’t apply, because the AI tools can serve up, almost verbatim, large chunks of text from Times news articles.

The lawsuit says:

Publicly, Defendants insist that their conduct is protected as “fair use” because their unlicensed use of copyrighted content to train GenAI models serves a new “transformative” purpose.

But there is nothing “transformative” about using The Times’s content without payment to create products that substitute for The Times and steal audiences away from it.

Because the outputs of Defendants’ GenAI models compete with and closely mimic the inputs used to train them, copying Times works for that purpose is not fair use.

The Wall Street Journal writes that the legal landscape surrounding generative-AI is “unsettled”, with the technology still in its early days, adding:

There are other lawsuits that could test the rights of AI companies to “scrape” content from the web to train AI tools, including one by several prominent book authors against OpenAI.

In February, Getty Images sued the AI art company Stability AI in Delaware, alleging that it had infringed on Getty’s copyrights. Stability AI at the time said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

The New York Times has asked for a jury trial in the suit, which was filed in U.S. federal court in the Southern District of New York (and can be seen here).

It reports;

The Times is the first major American media organization to sue the companies, the creators of ChatGPT and other popular A.I. platforms, over copyright issues associated with its written works.

The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, contends that millions of articles published by The Times were used to train automated chatbots that now compete with the news outlet as a source of reliable information.

The announcement of a budget on 6 March “looks like a last throw of the dice by a flailing Conservative government”, says Liberal Democrat Treasury spokeswoman Sarah Olney.

Olney adds:

“It’s too late for Jeremy Hunt to turn the tide after his record of failure has left us with growth flat-lining and public services at breaking point. People will never forgive the Conservative Party for crashing the economy, wrecking the NHS and clobbering families with years of unfair tax hikes.

“The only way to repair the damage done by the Conservatives is to kick them out of office through a general election.”

Shadow financial secretary to the Treasury James Murray has said it’s too late for the goevrnment to fix the damage caused to the UK economy:

“The next Budget will come after 14 years of economic failure under the Conservatives that have left working people worse off.

“The tax burden is set to be the highest in 70 years, with 25 Tory tax rises since the last election alone, and economic growth is on the floor. Nothing Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt do in March can repair the damage they have done to our economy.

Just in: There were more customers in the shops this Boxing Day than a year ago, so ignore what we published this morning (see earlier post).

Data provider MRI Software has just reported that footfall levels were 4% higher than in 2022 yesterday, boosted by high streets and Central London. Initially they reported this morning that footfall fell by a fifth – which is being blamed on ‘technical issues’.

This is relief for retailers, although footfall was still almost 15% lower than before the pandemic.

MRI Software say:

• Full day results show that footfall on Boxing Day rose year on year by +4% across all UK retail destinations, largely driven by high streets (+8.8%)

• Week on week, footfall was -33% lower across all destination types

• Shopping centres and retail parks declined by -34.9% and -47.5% from the same day in the week before

• Central London experienced an increase in footfall by +10.6% from 2022, and +1.6% from 2019

• Compared to 2019 levels, footfall remains -14.9% lower

Kate Nicholls, the head of UK Hospitality, says the trade body will work on a “detailed submission on measures to support hospitality” to feed into the chancellor’s plans for the budget.

The spring budget is seen by Downing Street as “a crucial milestone” in the run-up to a general election expected next year, with tax cuts widely expected, points out the Financial Times.

Jeremy Hunt’s decision to announce 6 March as the date for a spring budget will fuel speculation over the timing of the next general election despite the Conservatives trailing in the opinion polls, my colleague Richard Partington reports.

He adds:

Labour’s lead over the Conservatives is at 13 points, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.

The budget is likely to be Jeremy Hunt’s “last major chance to prepare the ground” ahead of the next election, says Reuters, adding:

The budget statement will include the government’s tax and spending plans as well as new growth and borrowing forecasts and government debt issuance for the 2024/25 financial year.

UPDATE: This post now inaccurate due to updated footfall data….

Yesterday was a disappointing Boxing Day for UK retailers, new figures indicate.

MRI Software has reported that footfall at the UK’s retail destinations was more than a fifth (22.1%) lower this Boxing Day than a year ago.

The day had started better, with footfall 2.3% higher than last year by 3pm, but across the full day shoppers dropped off significantly compared to 2022.

The rise earlier in the day had been driven by a 6.5% increase in high street visitors, MRI Software said.

The only town to experience a rise compared to last year was central London, where footfall was 12.9% higher.

Week on week, footfall was 32.9% lower across all high street, retail park and shopping centre destinations.

Jenni Matthews, Marketing and Insights Director at MRI Software, says:

The footfall drop of -32.9% week on week across all destination types is not surprising given that last week consumers were finalising their festive shopping. The fact that compared to 2019 levels, footfall remains -33.8% indicates the long-term impacts of the continued rise of online shopping, as many consumers may have started their sale shopping on Christmas Day evening, and with Black Friday only a few weeks ago many will have grabbed their bargains back then.

We also can’t forget that many people may be tightening their purse strings given the cost of living status, or may still be spending time with their families on Boxing Day and not be heading out to stores and destinations until later in the week.

Eurozone government bonds are also rallying this morning, pushing down borrowing costs to the lowest level in months.

This is pushing down the yield, or interest rate, on eurozone bonds.

Reuters reports:

Germany’s 10-year yield, the benchmark for the euro zone, was down 4 basis points (bps) at 1.931%. The yield, which moves inversely to the price, fell to its lowest since March earlier in the session at 1.931%.

Italy’s 10-year bond yield was last 4 bps lower at 3.507%, after falling to 3.49%, the lowest since August 2022.

In the currency markets, the US dollar has slipped to a five-month low on expectations that the Federal Reserve could soon cut interest rates.

With trading volumes thin at the end of the year, the euro touched a four-month peak, rising over $1.105 for the first time since August.

The UK’s transport minister has predicted that we could see cars with some self-driving technology on British roads by 2026.

Mark Harper told Radio 4’s Today programme that autonomous driving tech could be rolled out within three years, saying:

The legislation is going through Parliament at the moment so hopefully we’ll get that through Parliament by the end of 2024.

“Probably by as early as 2026, people will start seeing some elements of these cars that have full self-driving capabilities being rolled out.

“We already know the technology works. You can see the technology being rolled out with a safety driver in place.

“I’ve seen the technology being used in California for example, without a safety driver, so in full, autonomous mode.

“This technology exists, it works and what we’re doing is putting in place the proper legislation so that people can have full confidence in the safety of this technology, which I think is one of the important things we’ve got to do.”

Last month’s King’s Speech outlined plans for the Automated Vehicles Bill which will enable self-driving vehicles in the United Kingdom.

But while this technology has been under development for years, it remains problematic.

Earlier this month, Tesla said it would install new safeguards to its Autopilot advanced driver-assistance system on over 2 million vehicles in the US.

And in October, California suspended driverless cars operated by GM’s Cruise subsidiary in San Francisco, saying the vehicles were a risk to the public after a series of accidents.

Ford BlueCruise director Charles Nolan told Today that the technology to take a driver home from the pub was “certainly not there now”, adding:

“I think there is a way to go.”

European stock markets have now got into the Santa rally spirit.

In London, the FTSE 100 index is up 48 points or 0.6%, to 7745.

France’s CAC is 0.36% higher, with Germany’s DAX up 0.25% and Italy’s FTSE MIB 0.4%.

Oil is trading near its highest level since the end of November, as a spate of Houthi attacks disrupted shipping in the Red Sea.

Yesterday, the oil price climbed by 2.5%, with Brent crude settling $2 per barrel higher at $81.07, a one-month closing high. It’s slightly higher this morning.

Before Christmas the United States shot down four drones headed towards a US destroyer in the southern Red Sea, shortly after it launched Operation Prosperity Guardian to patrol Red Sea waters near Yemen.

European stock markets are reopening, after the Christmas break….

And the UK’s FTSE 100 share index has jumped by 35 points, or 0.45%, to 7732 points – towards the seven-month high set last week.

Mining companies are leading the risers, with Anglo American up 2.4% and Glencore gaining 1.9%.

Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC both gained 0.1% at the open.