“Ultimately, whether or not this lawsuit ends up shaping copyright law will be determined by whether the suit is really about the future of fair use and copyright, or whether it’s a salvo in a negotiation,” Jane Ginsburg, a professor at Columbia Law School, said of the lawsuit by The Times.

How the legal landscape unfolds could shape the nascent yet heavily capitalized A.I. industry.

Some A.I. companies have been flooded with venture capital in the past year after the public rollout of ChatGPT went viral. A stock plan under consideration could value OpenAI at over $80 billion; Microsoft has invested $13 billion in the company and has incorporated its technology into its own products. But questions about the use of intellectual property to train models have been top of mind for investors, Mr. Havemeyer said.

Competition in the A.I. field may boil down to data haves and have-nots.

Companies with the rights to large quantities of data, such as Adobe and Bloomberg — or that have amassed their own data, such as Meta and Google — have started developing their own A.I. tools. Mr. Havemeyer noted that an established company like Microsoft was well equipped to secure data licensing agreements and tackle legal challenges. But start-ups with less capital may have a harder time obtaining the data they need to compete.

“Generative A.I. begins and ends with data,” Mr. Havemeyer said.

Benjamin Mullin contributed reporting.