Google CEO Pichai says company will 'sort it out' if OpenAI misused YouTube for AI training

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said Google will "sort it out" if it determines Microsoft-backed OpenAI relied on YouTube content to train an artificial intelligence model that can generate videos.

The comments, in an interview Tuesday with CNBC's Deirdre Bosa, come after OpenAI technology chief Mira Murati told the Wall Street Journal in March that she wasn't sure if YouTube videos were part of the training data for the company's Sora model introduced earlier in the year.

Murati said OpenAI had drawn on publicly available data and on licensed data. The New York Times later reported that OpenAI had transcribed over a million hours of YouTube videos.

Asked if Google would sue OpenAI if the startup violated the search company's terms of service, Pichai didn't offer specifics.

"Look, I think it's a question for them to answer," Pichai said. "I don't have anything to add. We do have clear terms of service. And so, you know, I think normally in these things we engage with companies and make sure they understand our terms of service. And we'll sort it out."

Pichai said Google has processes in place to figure out if OpenAI failed to comply with the rules. Newspapers such as The New York Times have already taken aim at OpenAI for allegedly breaking copyright law and training models on their articles.

Pichai's interview followed a keynote to developers at Google's I/O conference, where executives announced new AI models, including one called Veo that can compose synthetic videos. Those looking to get early access will have to receive approval from Google.

OpenAI preempted the Google event on Monday. The company revealed an AI model called GPT-4o and showed how users of its ChatGPT mobile app would be able to hold realistic voice