Assuming that the OpenAI models were trained on NY Times articles (it's still unclear to me if they were directly, or if ChatGPT can just write an article "in the style of the NYT") – what I don't understand is, why run the risk of this situation? Did no one stop and think, "Hmm, maybe we should just use freely available text sources and not the paywalled articles of the most wealthy newspaper in the country?" Leaving the ethics of doing so aside, it just seems like an exceptionally poor tactical move.