OpenAI Attempts to Copyright Strike ChatGPT Subreddit

UPD: r/ChatGPT mods shared a short update announcing that OpenAI has allowed them to keep the logo. This seemingly confirms the legitimacy of the original complaint and raises questions about what prompted the company's change of heart.

Original article: In what can only be described as an unprecedented feat of hypocrisy, ChatGPT and DALL-E developer OpenAI, a company that doesn't shy away from using copyrighted materials to train its AI models, has recently attempted to copyright strike the r/ChatGPT subreddit over the alleged unauthorized use of its logo.

First noticed by 404 Media, the copyright complaint was made public by the subreddit's moderator HOLUPREDICTIONS, who posted a screenshot of the submission accusing r/ChatGPT of using OpenAI's copyrighted logo without permission. "The 'subreddit profile image' does make use of the copyrighted content, which can lead to user confusion: please address the unauthorized copyrighted elements by May 16, following the steps: Remove the copyrighted image from the subreddit profile. Reply to this message to confirm that the requested changes have been completed," the complaint read.

Quickly becoming the subreddit's top post, the publication quickly gathered hundreds of comments, with many of them highlighting the irony of OpenAI, "a company who scraped the entire internet", now accusing others of copyright infringement:

Others began using AI to combat the issue, generating logos "that [look] similar to the ChatGPT logo but [don't] infringe of the copyright":

At the moment of writing this, the subreddit's logo still bears the official OpenAI emblem, indicating that the situation between the company and r/ChatGPT is most likely still being sorted out.

In a follow-up statement, HOLUPREDICTIONS pointed out that the issue might not solely lie with ChatGPT's developer but also with Reddit itself. They mentioned that Reddit doesn't seem to thoroughly verify if copyright claims are genuinely from the company, thus apparently allowing anyone to add any email address. However, since there's a high chance that the complaint is legitimate, the moderators have already launched a logo competition, with the winner set to be selected next week.

Interestingly enough, OpenAI isn't the first AI developer to raise eyebrows with its apparent hypocrisy. Back in early March, there were reports that Midjourney accused Stable Diffusion of image theft and causing a 24-hour outage, resulting in Stability AI employees being banned from its services. Aliena vitia in oculis habemus, a tergo nostra sunt.

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