Canadian News Giants Sue OpenAI for Billions Over Alleged Copyright Infringement

To stop its 'strip-mining of journalism,' some of the biggest Canadian news companies are suing OpenAI to the tune of $20,000 for every article fed to ChatGPT

A number of media companies have been challenging OpenAI on copyright grounds. First reported by The Guardian, a number of major Canadian news and media companies have banded together to sue OpenAI over its use of their articles to train large language models. In a statement about the lawsuit, News Media Canada president Paul Deegan argued that "these artificial intelligence companies cannibalize proprietary content and are free-riding on the backs of news publishers who invest real money to employ real journalists who produce real stories for real people. "They are strip-mining journalism while substantially, unjustly, and unlawfully enriching themselves to the detriment of publishers." The suit was filed on Friday, and calls for a share of any profits OpenAI made from the use of articles from these companies, an injunction on OpenAI's continued use of any content from them, and damages of up to $20,000 per article used by OpenAI to train its LLMs. Given the dragnet nature of AI model training and the sheer number of individual articles likely in question, OpenAI could be liable for catastrophic damages if the court rules in the media companies' favor. The companies behind the lawsuit include: I'm not usually one to lose any sleep over the protection of corporate copyright, but it's starting to become clear that copyright law may prove an effective defense against AI companies swallowing up the internet whole and spitting it back out to us in diminished form. OpenAI is currently also fending off copyright lawsuits from the New York Times and a class action of authors including George R.R. Martin, while Elon Musk has also sued OpenAI in a bit of palace intrigue between him and other co-founders of the supposed non-profit.

Canadian news media are suing OpenAI for copyright infringement, but will they win?

Last week, five of Canada's most prominent news media outlets launched a lawsuit against OpenAI for copyright infringement, demanding what could amount to billions in damages. The suit follows similar cases brought earlier this year against the creator of ChatGPT by The New York Times and other media companies in the United States. At the heart of all these lawsuits is the claim that OpenAI "scraped" large amounts of content from media sites. This involved copying without permission. And the company is making a profit from it without compensating the original creators. OpenAI has yet to formally respond to the Canadian lawsuit, but insists that using news material to train its chatbot is "fair dealing" under copyright law - and not an infringement. Who is right? And why is OpenAI entering licensing agreements with various media companies if they're so sure they're not breaking the law? Is the Canadian case just a ploy to land a big licensing deal? A closer look at how chatbots are trained suggests that OpenAI may be right that "scraping" isn't copying. But it may not be "fair dealing" either. Breach of contract? To be clear, the five media companies - Torstar, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail Inc., The Canadian Press and CBC/Radio-Canada - are also making two further claims. OpenAI thwarted protective measures the news sites employ to block tools used to scrape their websites, and by doing so, breached the sites' terms of service. The news companies bringing the lawsuit rely on tools to "prevent unauthorized scraping of data" from their websites. An example is the Robot Exclusion Protocol, which manages how software like bots and web crawlers can access a site. These tools, along with paywalls and account restrictions, are meant to safeguard against unauthorized uses of their material. The plaintiffs say that by reading their content online, site visitors accept the terms of use found somewhere in the background, and that since 2015, the terms have made clear that news material is for "personal, non-commercial use of individual users only." Fair dealing exemption The crux of all three claims in the Canadian lawsuit is that by using their material - scraping content - OpenAI is copying their work and making unauthorized use of it for profit. But is scraping really copying? And if it is, does it count as fair dealing? Copyright law in Canada and the US allows for unauthorized copying or use of a protected work in some cases under the fair dealing or fair use exception. Courts consider a series of factors, including the purpose of the copying (commercial or educational), the extent of the copying and its impact on the original work. Soon after The New York Times launched its lawsuit, OpenAI argued that training its chatbot on news material found on the web does not involve unlawful copying. It falls under fair use, and they pointed to various legal experts and civil society groups that agree. Legal scholars have argued that scraping data from news sites involves making a temporary copy, but only as a first step for the purpose of "abstract[ing] metadata" or information about relationships between words and sentences. Combining large amounts of metadata creates a new "artifact" that is "not substantially similar to any particular work in the training data." As the authors put it: "Generative AI models are generally not designed to copy training data; they are designed to learn from the data at an abstract and uncopyrightable level." There is, after all, no copyright in statistical patterns or word frequencies. The nonprofit group Creative Commons agrees: OpenAI's use of news material to train a chatbot is similar, they say, to Google's digitizing millions of books to create a searchable database. Both are "transformative" uses of the original material. They result in a product that serves different purposes that don't compete with or take anything away from the original creators. Licensing and settlements To hedge its bets, right after The New York Times lawsuit, OpenAI did two things. It said that it would respect a news organization's choice to opt out of allowing its content to be used for training data. And it began to make deals with news organizations to license their content for training purposes. But the lawsuits remain, and judges in Canada and the US will soon begin hearing them. They will have to decide: is scraping a form of reproduction that copyright protects against - and is it fair dealing? One factor will be the non-competitive nature of chatbots and their inability to access paywalled content from The Globe and Mail or Toronto Star. But another factor might involve licensing. As other commentators have noted, finding that OpenAI's use of news content to train its AI is fair dealing could reduce the market for licensing deals. The more deals that are struck, the stronger this market will appear - and the greater the cost to media companies of calling this fair dealing. This makes a settlement and licensing deal in the Canadian case likely. But OpenAI may just roll the dice. And if it does, the future of AI could hang in the balance.

Major Canadian News Outlets Sue OpenAI In New Copyright Case

A coalition of Canada's biggest news organizations is suing OpenAI, the maker of the artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT, accusing the company of illegally using their content in the first case of its kind in the country. Five of the country's major news companies, including the publishers of its top newspapers, newswires and the national broadcaster, filed the joint suit in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Friday morning. While this is the first such lawsuit in Canada, it is similar to a suit brought against OpenAI and Microsoft in the United States in 2023 by The New York Times, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied the suit's claims. In response to the Canadian lawsuit, a spokesman for OpenAI said "We have not yet had the opportunity to review the allegations," but added that "our models are trained on publicly available data, grounded in fair use and related international copyright principles that are fair for creators and support innovation." The Canadian outlets, which include the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and the CBC -- the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation -- are seeking what could add up to billions of dollars in damages. They are asking for 20,000 Canadian dollars, or $14,700, per article they claim was illegally scraped and used to train ChatGPT. They are also seeking a share of the profits made by what they claim is OpenAI's misuse of their content, as well as for the company to stop such practices in the future. "OpenAI regularly breaches copyright and online terms of use by scraping large swaths of content from Canadian media to help develop its products, such as ChatGPT," the news organizations said in a joint statement. "OpenAI's public statements that it is somehow fair or in the public interest for them to use other companies' intellectual property for their own commercial gain is wrong,'' they added. "Journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI using other companies' journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It's illegal." The 84-page lawsuit focuses on what it says is the unlawful use of journalism produced by these news organizations to train OpenAI's chatbot, ChatGPT. It accuses OpenAI of ignoring the Canadian news outlets' use of specific technological and legal tools -- such the Robot Exclusion Protocol, copyright disclaimers and paywalls -- in place to prevent scraping or other types of unauthorized copying of their published content. The lawsuit in Canada comes after The Times and other publishers pursued their own legal cases in the United States. In another case, also from 2023, the Authors Guild and a coalition of major authors such as John Grisham and Jonathan Franzen have similarly claimed copyright infringement against the company and its signature product, ChatGPT. The New York Times case, which is currently in discovery, also names Microsoft, which is OpenAI's largest funder, provides the computing power needed to build OpenAI's chatbots, uses its chatbot technology and may help gather data used to train that chatbot technology. That case focuses on what the Times says is both the illegal use of content to train ChatGPT and the use of that content for the production of search results. By contrast, the Canadian case focuses on the training part and does not name Microsoft. Sana Halwani, a partner at the Canadian law firm Lenczner Slaght, which represents the media organizations in the lawsuit, said there were a number of factors that determined the focus of their case. "We believe we have a strong case related to the training of the models. The training of the models is the core of the problem," Ms. Halwani said on Friday. The ongoing legal battles by prominent publishers and authors have been compounded by a high-profile lawsuit brought over the summer against the company and its founders on separate grounds by Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but left in acrimony in 2018. Mr. Musk's lawsuit claims that OpenAI and two of its founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, breached the company's founding contract by putting commercial interests ahead of the public good. OpenAI has described Mr. Musk's claims as meritless. The company raised $6.6 billion in its latest funding round in October against a valuation of $157 billion. Cade Metz contributed reporting from San Francisco.

Canada's Largest News Organizations Sue OpenAI

Many of Canada's largest news organizations have sued ChatGPT-firm OpenAI, accusing it of breaking copyright laws and using their content for commercial gain. The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, CBC/Radio-Canada, Torstar, and Postmedia have all co-signed the lawsuit filed on Nov. 29. Chatbots are trained using large swathes of publically available data gathered online, with newspapers being one common source of this training data, a process known as "data scraping." The filing claims that: "OpenAI has taken large swaths of valuable work, indiscriminately and without regard for copyright protection or the contractual Terms of Use applicable to the misappropriated content." The lawsuit goes on to allege that OpenAI "was aware of the value" of the company's intellectual property and of "the need to both pay for that information and secure the express authorization" throughout the entire process of collecting the data. The lawsuit also highlights the significant financial success of OpenAI -- which has achieved a valuation of $157 billion -- saying it was "substantially and unjustly enriched" at their expense. The group of news companies is seeking damages as compensation for the wrongful misappropriation of their content, as well as "permanent injunctive relief" to stop OpenAI from "continuing with its unlawful conduct." The group of Canadian publications has plenty of company when it comes to taking legal action against OpenAI. They join many of the world's largest newspapers such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal publisher News Corp, who have all filed similar suits against AI firms. However, the recent lawsuit comes as The New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI, which was first filed in October 2023, still has no clear end in sight. Most recently OpenAI's defense argued that the NYT's lawyers were using examples of "unrealistic prompts" in their case against them. And it's not just OpenAI that has media organizations looking for their cut. Dow Jones & Company and NYP Holdings, which own The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, respectively, filed a combined lawsuit against OpenAI-competitor Perplexity AI on similar grounds in October. The New York Times sent Perplexity a cease-and-desist letter earlier this month. Lawsuits about where ChatGPT gets its training data aren't the only thing that OpenAI has to worry about. Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk filed a lawsuit in March alleging that OpenAI, has abused its charitable status and has gone from a "tax-exempt charity to a $157bn for-profit, market-paralyzing gorgon - and in just eight years." OpenAI has managed to successfully deflect some of the legal attacks coming its way. Earlier this month, a judge dismissed a copyright case against OpenAI brought by independent publishers Alternet and Raw Story, with the judge ruling that they weren't able to provide adequate proof that ChatGPT was trained on their material.

OpenAI hit with billion-dollar lawsuit from Canadian publishers over claims it misused their articles

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. What just happened? OpenAI being sued over using copyrighted material for its LLM training is far from new, and this latest case is another in which a huge amount of money is being demanded from the AI firm. Several Canadian news and media companies have joined forces to sue Sam Altman's firm for using their articles without permission, and they're asking for C$20,000 ($14,239) per infringement - meaning a loss could cost OpenAI billions. The latest case against OpenAI accusing it of using content without permission, attribution, or payment was filed in Ontario's superior court of justice on Friday. The plaintiffs include the Globe and Mail, the Canadian Press, the CBC, the Toronto Star, Metroland Media and Postmedia. "The defendants have engaged in ongoing, deliberate and unauthorized misappropriation of the plaintiffs' valuable news media works. The plaintiffs bring this action to prevent and seek recompense for these unlawful activities," said the organizations in a statement, via The Guardian. The suit adds that OpenAI scraped content from the news and media companies' websites, using the proprietary content to develop its GPT models without consent or authorization. "They are strip-mining journalism while substantially, unjustly, and unlawfully enriching themselves to the detriment of publishers." "Journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI using other companies' journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It's illegal." The suit asks for punitive damages, a share of profits made by OpenAI from using the news organizations' articles, and an injunction barring the company from using any of the news articles in the future. The media firms want C$20,000 for every article that OpenAI used, which would equate to a payout worth billions of dollars. OpenAI and Microsoft, its biggest investor, are already facing a lawsuit from the New York Times over claims that millions of its articles were used to train and create OpenAI's LLMs. As with the latest case, the publication is demanding billions of dollars. OpenAI might not be too worried, though. On November 7, a New York federal judge dismissed a similar lawsuit from Raw Story and AlterNet over claims it produced verbatim or nearly verbatim works of journalism "at least some of the time" without providing author, title, copyright, or terms of use information contained in those works. OpenAI's defense in this case, and all similar cases it faces, is to claim that its models were trained on publicly available data, and that these actions fall under fair use. "We collaborate closely with news publishers, including in the display, attribution and links to their content in ChatGPT search, and offer them easy ways to opt out should they so desire," an OpenAI spokesperson said. OpenAI and Microsoft are also facing a lawsuit from Elon Musk. The billionaire wants a preliminary injunction to stop OpenAI from transitioning to a for-profit enterprise. He also alleges that the companies are illegally attempting to monopolize the generative AI market.

Canadian news media are suing OpenAI for copyright infringement, but will they win?

Thompson Rivers University provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA. Last week, five of Canada's most prominent news media outlets launched a lawsuit against OpenAI for copyright infringement, demanding what could amount to billions in damages. The suit follows similar cases brought earlier this year against the creator of ChatGPT by The New York Times and other media companies in the United States. At the heart of all these lawsuits is the claim that OpenAI "scraped" large amounts of content from media sites. This involved copying without permission. And the company is making a profit from it without compensating the original creators. OpenAI has yet to formally respond to the Canadian lawsuit, but insists that using news material to train its chatbot is "fair dealing" under copyright law -- and not an infringement. Who is right? And why is OpenAI entering licensing agreements with various media companies if they're so sure they're not breaking the law? Is the Canadian case just a ploy to land a big licensing deal? A closer look at how chatbots are trained suggests that OpenAI may be right that "scraping" isn't copying. But it may not be "fair dealing" either. Breach of contract? To be clear, the five media companies -- Torstar, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail Inc., The Canadian Press and CBC/Radio-Canada -- are also making two further claims. OpenAI thwarted protective measures the news sites employ to block tools used to scrape their websites, and by doing so, breached the sites' terms of service. The news companies bringing the lawsuit rely on tools to "prevent unauthorized scraping of data" from their websites. An example is the Robot Exclusion Protocol, which manages how software like bots and web crawlers can access a site. These tools, along with paywalls and account restrictions, are meant to safeguard against unauthorized uses of their material. The plaintiffs say that by reading their content online, site visitors accept the terms of use found somewhere in the background, and that since 2015, the terms have made clear that news material is for "personal, non-commercial use of individual users only." Fair dealing exemption The crux of all three claims in the Canadian lawsuit is that by using their material -- scraping content -- OpenAI is copying their work and making unauthorized use of it for profit. But is scraping really copying? And if it is, does it count as fair dealing? Copyright law in Canada and the U.S. allows for unauthorized copying or use of a protected work in some cases under the fair dealing or fair use exception. Courts consider a series of factors, including the purpose of the copying (commercial or educational), the extent of the copying and its impact on the original work. Soon after The New York Times launched its lawsuit, OpenAI argued that training its chatbot on news material found on the web does not involve unlawful copying. It falls under fair use, and they pointed to various legal experts and civil society groups that agree. Legal scholars have argued that scraping data from news sites involves making a temporary copy, but only as a first step for the purpose of "abstract[ing] metadata" or information about relationships between words and sentences. Combining large amounts of metadata creates a new "artifact" that is "not substantially similar to any particular work in the training data." As the authors put it: "Generative AI models are generally not designed to copy training data; they are designed to learn from the data at an abstract and uncopyrightable level." There is, after all, no copyright in statistical patterns or word frequencies. The nonprofit group Creative Commons agrees: OpenAI's use of news material to train a chatbot is similar, they say, to Google's digitizing millions of books to create a searchable database. Both are "transformative" uses of the original material. They result in a product that serves different purposes that don't compete with or take anything away from the original creators. Licensing and settlements To hedge its bets, right after The New York Times lawsuit, OpenAI did two things. It said that it would respect a news organization's choice to opt out of allowing its content to be used for training data. And it began to make deals with news organizations to license their content for training purposes. But the lawsuits remain, and judges in Canada and the U.S. will soon begin hearing them. They will have to decide: is scraping a form of reproduction that copyright protects against -- and is it fair dealing? One factor will be the non-competitive nature of chatbots and their inability to access paywalled content from The Globe and Mail or Toronto Star. But another factor might involve licensing. As other commentators have noted, finding that OpenAI's use of news content to train its AI is fair dealing could reduce the market for licensing deals. The more deals that are struck, the stronger this market will appear -- and the greater the cost to media companies of calling this fair dealing. This makes a settlement and licensing deal in the Canadian case likely. But OpenAI may just roll the dice. And if it does, the future of AI could hang in the balance.

Canadian publishers take OpenAI to court

In the newest legal battle between artificial intelligence and pretty much everybody else, OpenAI is once again on the chopping block. A group of five Canadian news companies including the National Post, Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, and CBC/Radio-Canada filed a lawsuit against OpenAI alleging copyright infringement and breaching their online terms of use, Reuters first reported. The group is seeking up to $20,000 Canadian for each article used by OpenAI, The Guardian reported. "Rather than seek to obtain the information legally, OpenAI has elected to brazenly misappropriate the News Media Companies' valuable intellectual property and convert it for its own uses, including commercial uses, without consent or consideration," the filing, which The Verge published, reads. The filing goes on to allege that OpenAI has "capitalized on the commercial success of its GPT models, building an expansive suite of GPT-based products and services, and raising significant capital -- all without obtaining a valid license from any of the News Media Companies. In doing so, OpenAI has been substantially and unjustly enriched to the detriment of the News Media Companies." The news companies, they write, did not receive "any form of consideration, including payment, in exchange for OpenAI's use of their Works." "Journalism is in the public interest," Torstar, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, and CBC/Radio-Canada said in a statement, according to Reuters. "OpenAI using other companies' journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It's illegal." In response, OpenAI said that the data its models were trained on was publicly available and fair use. "We collaborate closely with news publishers, including in the display, attribution and links to their content in ChatGPT search, and offer them easy ways to opt out should they so desire," OpenAI spokesperson Jason Deutrom told The Verge in a statement.

OpenAI Sued by Canadian News Companies Over Alleged Copyright Breaches

OpenAI says its models were trained on publicly available data Five Canadian news media companies filed a legal action on Friday against ChatGPT owner OpenAI, accusing the artificial-intelligence company of regularly breaching copyright and online terms of use. The case is part of a wave of lawsuits against OpenAI and other tech companies by authors, visual artists, music publishers and other copyright owners over data used to train generative AI systems. Microsoft is OpenAI's major backer. In a statement, Torstar, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, and CBC/Radio-Canada said OpenAI was scraping large swaths of content to develop its products without getting permission or compensating content owners. "Journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI using other companies' journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It's illegal," they said. A New York federal judge dismissed a lawsuit on Nov. 7 against OpenAI that claimed it misused articles from news outlets Raw Story and AlterNet. In an 84-page statement of claim filed in Ontario's superior court of justice, the five Canadian companies demanded damages from OpenAI and a permanent injunction preventing it from using their material without consent. "Rather than seek to obtain the information legally, OpenAI has elected to brazenly misappropriate the News Media Companies' valuable intellectual property and convert it for its own uses, including commercial uses, without consent or consideration," they said in the filing. "The News Media Companies have never received from OpenAI any form of consideration, including payment, in exchange for OpenAI's use of their Works." In response, OpenAI said its models were trained on publicly available data, grounded in fair use and related international copyright principles that were fair for creators. "We collaborate closely with news publishers, including in the display, attribution and links to their content in ChatGPT search, and offer them easy ways to opt out should they so desire," a spokesperson said via email. The Canadian news companies' document did not mention Microsoft. This month, billionaire Elon Musk expanded a lawsuit against OpenAI to include Microsoft, alleging the two companies illegally sought to monopolize the market for generative AI and sideline competitors.

Top Canadian news outlets sue OpenAI over copyright infringement

Five leading Canadian news outlets filed a suit against OpenAI on Friday, alleging the ChatGPT owner of violating copyright laws to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models. The outlets' lawsuit, filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice against OpenAI, is the latest in a series of legal challenges against the AI developer over its use of data and news materials to train their AI systems. The companies -- Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, Torstar, the Canadian Press, and CBC/Radio-Canada -- said in a statement Friday OpenAI is "using other companies' journalism for their own commercial gain" and claimed this was against the law. Noting they "welcome technological innovations," the companies said any use of intellectual property "must be on fair terms." "OpenAI regularly breaches copyright and online terms of use by scraping large swaths of content from Canadian media to help develop its products, such as ChatGPT," the outlets said. "OpenAI is capitalizing and profiting from the use of this content, without getting permission or compensating content owners." The 84-page suit requests damages from OpenAI and a permanent injunction prohibiting the tech company from using material without permission. An OpenAI spokesperson said its models are "trained on publicly available data, grounded in fair use and related international copyright principles that are fair for creators and support innovation." "We collaborate closely with news publishers, including in the display, attribution and links to their content in ChatGPT search, and offer them easy ways to opt-out should they so desire," the spokesperson added. The lawsuit joins that of several other news outlets similarly alleging copyright infringement, including The New York Times, which argued OpenAI threatens the newspaper's bottom line by stealing billions of dollars worth of work by its journalists. OpenAI has pushed back on the claims of The Times suit, maintaining training is fair use and outlets are provided an "opt-out" if they do not want the company's tools accessing their sites. However, many outlets and media companies, including The Associated Press, Axel Springer, News Corp, The Atlantic and Vox Media, have also reached licensing agreements with the AI company. Axel Springer owns Politico and Business Insider, while News Corp owns The Wall Street Journal and New York Post. A federal judge dismissed a suit by Raw Story and AlterNet against OpenAI earlier this month, finding the companies failed to show an actual injury.

Canadian news organizations sue OpenAI for ChatGPT copyright infringement

A coalition of Canadian news outlets sued OpenAI on Friday for copyright infringement. The joint lawsuit accuses the company of "capitalizing and profiting" from the unauthorized use of their content for ChatGPT. The legal action was filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. The plaintiffs include CBC/Radio-Canada, Postmedia, Metroland, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and The Canadian Press. They're seeking punitive damages from OpenAI, payments for any profits the ChatGPT creator made from using their news articles and a ban on further use of their content. "OpenAI regularly breaches copyright and online terms of use by scraping large swaths of content from Canadian media to help develop its products, such as ChatGPT," the media outlets wrote in a statement (via CBC News). "OpenAI is capitalizing and profiting from the use of this content, without getting permission or compensating content owners." In a statement to Engadget, OpenAI noted its news content partnerships and opt-out process while voicing a belief that its practices are covered under fair use. "Hundreds of millions of people around the world rely on ChatGPT to improve their daily lives, inspire creativity, and solve hard problems," an OpenAI spokesperson wrote. "Our models are trained on publicly available data, grounded in fair use and related international copyright principles that are fair for creators and support innovation. We collaborate closely with news publishers, including in the display, attribution and links to their content in ChatGPT search, and offer them easy ways to opt-out should they so desire." OpenAI's new search engine is built into ChatGPT. It crawls websites and points users toward them for additional info. The company has said it doesn't use that data for crawling or training its models. The Canadian news outlets have joined a long list of companies, individuals, and other organizations that have sued the ChatGPT maker for unauthorized training on their work. That list includes (among others) The New York Times, The Intercept, Raw Story, a group of nonfiction authors and the comedian Sarah Silverman. Early this year, OpenAI wrote to a UK committee that it would be "impossible to train today's leading AI models without using copyrighted materials." This month, the NYT filed a court declaration as part of its lawsuit, stating that OpenAI's engineers accidentally erased evidence of the company's AI training data. OpenAI has argued that using publicly available online content falls under the fair use doctrine. The Canadian plaintiffs objected to that view, writing that "journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI using other companies' journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It's illegal."

OpenAI Sued by Top Canadian Media Outlets Over Copyright Infringement

ChatGPT creator OpenAI has been sued by more news organizations for using articles to train its artificial intelligence systems, this time by top Canadian media outlets. Torstar, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press and CBC/Radio-Canada on Friday filed a joint lawsuit in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice against OpenAI. The legal action alleges the Sam Altman-led firm is "infringing, authorizing, and/or inducing the infringement of the news media companies' copyright in the owned works," in violation of copyright laws. The AI giant has been sued by several publishers and other copyright holders, accusing OpenAI of pilfering their work without compensation and consent to use articles by media companies to train automated chatbots. In a statement, the Canadian media outlets added: "OpenAI regularly breaches copyright and online terms of use by scraping large swaths of content from Canadian media to help develop its products, such as ChatGPT. OpenAI is capitalizing and profiting from the use of this content, without getting permission or compensating content owners." Their claim aims to address the "inappropriate and illegal use of Canadian content, and enforce Canadian laws." The lawsuit, led by legal firm Lenczner Slaght LLP, seeks punitive damages from OpenAI and a permanent injunction against the AI giant from using their news articles.

Canadian news publishers sue OpenAI over alleged copyright infringement

A coalition of Canadian news publishers, including The Canadian Press, Torstar, Globe and Mail, Postmedia and CBC/Radio-Canada, has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for using news content to train its ChatGPT generative artificial intelligence system. The outlets said in a joint statement on Friday that OpenAI regularly breaches copyright by scraping large amounts of content from Canadian media. "OpenAI is capitalizing and profiting from the use of this content, without getting permission or compensating content owners," the statement said. The publishers argue that OpenAI practices undermine the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in journalism, and that content is protected by copyright. "News media companies welcome technological innovations. However, all participants must follow the law, and any use of intellectual property must be on fair terms," the statement said. Generative AI can create text, images, videos and computer code based on a simple prompt, but the systems must first study vast amounts of existing content. OpenAI said in a statement that its models are trained on publicly available data. It said they are "grounded in fair use and related international copyright principles that are fair for creators and support innovation." The company said it collaborates "closely with news publishers, including in the display, attribution and links to their content in ChatGPT search" and offers outlets "easy ways to opt out should they so desire." This is the first such case in Canada, though numerous lawsuits are underway in the United States, including a case by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft. Some news organizations have chosen to collaborate rather than fight with OpenAI by signing deals to get compensated for sharing news content that can be used to train its AI systems. The Associated Press is among the news organizations that have made licensing deals over the past year with OpenAI. Others include The Wall Street Journal and New York Post publisher News Corp., The Atlantic, Axel Springer in Germany and Prisa Media in Spain, France's Le Monde newspaper and the London-based Financial Times. Canada has passed a law requiring Google and Meta to compensate news publishers for the use of their content but has previously declined to say whether the Online News Act should apply to use by AI systems. In response to that legislation, Meta pulled news from its platforms in Canada, while Google has reached a deal to pay $100 million Canadian ($71 million) to Canadian news outlets.

Canadian media companies sue OpenAI in case potentially worth billions

Litigants say AI company used their articles to train its popular ChatGPT software without authorization Canada's major news organizations have sued tech firm OpenAI for potentially billions of dollars, alleging the company "unjustly enriched" itself by using news articles to train its popular ChatGPT software. The suit, filed on Friday in Ontario's superior court of justice, calls for punitive damages, a share of profits made by OpenAI from using the news organizations' articles, and an injunction barring the San Francisco-based company from using any of the news articles in the future. The litigants include the Globe and Mail, the Canadian Press, the CBC, the Toronto Star, Metroland Media and Postmedia. They want up to C$20,000 in damages for each article used by OpenAI, suggesting a victory in court could be worth billions. "The defendants have engaged in ongoing, deliberate and unauthorized misappropriation of the plaintiffs' valuable news media works. The plaintiffs bring this action to prevent and seek recompense for these unlawful activities," said the statement of claim filed by the news organizations. "To obtain the significant quantities of text data needed to develop their GPT models, OpenAI deliberately 'scrapes' (ie, accesses and copies) content from the news media companies' websites ... It then uses that proprietary content to develop its GPT models, without consent or authorization." None of the claims have been tested in court. The suit is the latest in a string of battles by Canadian media against American technology companies, including a bitter feud with Facebook parent Meta. Many news outlets in the US, including the New York Times, have also sued OpenAI. Valued at more than $150bn, OpenAI has already signed licensing agreements with a handful of media organizations, including the Associated Press wire service, NewsCorp and Condé Nast. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Canadian news publishers sue OpenAI over alleged copyright infringement

OTTAWA, Ontario -- A coalition of Canadian news publishers, including The Canadian Press, Torstar, Globe and Mail, Postmedia and CBC/Radio-Canada, has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for using news content to train its ChatGPT generative artificial intelligence system. The outlets said in a joint statement Friday that OpenAI regularly breaches copyright by scraping large amounts of content from Canadian media. "OpenAI is capitalizing and profiting from the use of this content, without getting permission or compensating content owners," the statement said. The publishers argue that OpenAI practices undermine the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in journalism, and that content is protected by copyright. "News media companies welcome technological innovations. However, all participants must follow the law, and any use of intellectual property must be on fair terms," the statement said. Generative AI can create text, images, videos and computer code based on a simple prompt, but the systems must first study vast amounts of existing content. OpenAI didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the lawsuit. This is the first such case in Canada, though numerous lawsuits are underway in the United States, including a case by the New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft. Some news organizations have chosen to collaborate rather than fight with OpenAI by signing deals to get compensated for sharing news content that can be used to train its AI systems. The Associated Press is among the news organizations that have made licensing deals over the past year with OpenAI; others include The Wall Street Journal and New York Post publisher News Corp., The Atlantic, Axel Springer in Germany and Prisa Media in Spain, France's Le Monde newspaper and the London-based Financial Times.

Major Canadian media sue OpenAI in case potentially worth billions

OTTAWA (AFP) - Canada's biggest news organisations on Friday sued OpenAI, accusing it of using their articles without permission to help train its artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT in a case that could cost the American company billions. Media including The Globe and Mail newspaper and public broadcaster CBC accused OpenAI of breaching copyrights by "scraping large swaths of content" and profiting from the use of this content, according to a statement. This was done without the permission of or compensation for the news organisations, which are seeking CAD20,000 (USD14,700) per article they claim was illegally scraped and used to train ChatGPT. This could put the total value of the claim in the billions of dollars. "Journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI using other companies' journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It's illegal," the coalition said. An OpenAI spokesperson responded to the lawsuit saying that its chatbox is trained on publicly available data "grounded in fair use and related international copyright principles that are fair for creators and support innovation." The company also collaborates with news publishers, the spokesperson added. The lawsuit is the first by Canadian media against OpenAI. The organizations -- which also include Postmedia, The Canadian Press and Torstar, the parent of the Toronto Star newspaper, according to legal documents -- are seeking an injunction to stop the San Francisco-based company's ongoing and future "unauthorised misappropriation" of their work. "We will not stand by while tech companies steal our content," Torstar chief executive Neil Oliver reportedly wrote in a memo to staff shortly after the court documents were filed. "While we embrace the opportunities that technological innovation can bring, all participants must follow the law, and any use of our intellectual property must be on fair terms," he said. Generative artificial intelligence caught the world's attention with OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in late 2022. The technology can produce videos, pictures or written works quickly, drawing from available content to answer demands expressed in everyday language. While elating some users, it has aroused ire in authors, artists and others who believe their creations are being absorbed without them being asked or compensated. Publications such as the New York Times have filed lawsuits to defend their content, while some news organisations have opted to make licensing deals.

Canadian news publishers sue OpenAI over alleged copyright infringement

OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) -- A coalition of Canadian news publishers, including The Canadian Press, Torstar, Globe and Mail, Postmedia and CBC/Radio-Canada, has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for using news content to train its ChatGPT generative artificial intelligence system. The outlets said in a joint statement Friday that OpenAI regularly breaches copyright by scraping large amounts of content from Canadian media. "OpenAI is capitalizing and profiting from the use of this content, without getting permission or compensating content owners," the statement said. The publishers argue that OpenAI practices undermine the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in journalism, and that content is protected by copyright. "News media companies welcome technological innovations. However, all participants must follow the law, and any use of intellectual property must be on fair terms," the statement said. Generative AI can create text, images, videos and computer code based on a simple prompt, but the systems must first study vast amounts of existing content. OpenAI didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the lawsuit. This is the first such case in Canada, though numerous lawsuits are underway in the United States, including a case by the New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft. Some news organizations have chosen to collaborate rather than fight with OpenAI by signing deals to get compensated for sharing news content that can be used to train its AI systems. The Associated Press is among the news organizations that have made licensing deals over the past year with OpenAI; others include The Wall Street Journal and New York Post publisher News Corp., The Atlantic, Axel Springer in Germany and Prisa Media in Spain, France's Le Monde newspaper and the London-based Financial Times.

Canadian news publishers sue OpenAI over alleged copyright infringement

OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) -- A coalition of Canadian news publishers, including The Canadian Press, Torstar, Globe and Mail, Postmedia and CBC/Radio-Canada, has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for using news content to train its ChatGPT generative artificial intelligence system. The outlets said in a joint statement Friday that OpenAI regularly breaches copyright by scraping large amounts of content from Canadian media. "OpenAI is capitalizing and profiting from the use of this content, without getting permission or compensating content owners," the statement said. The publishers argue that OpenAI practices undermine the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in journalism, and that content is protected by copyright. "News media companies welcome technological innovations. However, all participants must follow the law, and any use of intellectual property must be on fair terms," the statement said. Generative AI can create text, images, videos and computer code based on a simple prompt, but the systems must first study vast amounts of existing content. OpenAI didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the lawsuit. This is the first such case in Canada, though numerous lawsuits are underway in the United States, including a case by the New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft. Some news organizations have chosen to collaborate rather than fight with OpenAI by signing deals to get compensated for sharing news content that can be used to train its AI systems. The Associated Press is among the news organizations that have made licensing deals over the past year with OpenAI; others include The Wall Street Journal and New York Post publisher News Corp., The Atlantic, Axel Springer in Germany and Prisa Media in Spain, France's Le Monde newspaper and the London-based Financial Times.

Top Canadian publishers sue OpenAI, joining AI copyright fight

The lawsuit, brought by the CBC, Globe and Mail and others, shows how the battle over copyright and AI is expanding beyond the U.S. A group of prominent Canadian news organizations sued ChatGPT maker OpenAI Friday extending the fight over artificial intelligence and copyright beyond the United States. The lawsuit, brought by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Globe and Mail, Canadian Press and newspaper owners Torstar and Postmedia, alleges that OpenAI illegally scraped their content and used it to train its AI tools. Similar lawsuits have been launched in the United States by the New York Times and other newspapers including the Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News. The lawsuit, filed Friday in Ontario Superior Court, signals that the battle over using copyrighted work to train AI will continue, spreading to jurisdictions outside the United States and into countries that have been less accommodating to the desires of American tech companies. In the United States, news organizations have split on how to respond to AI companies, with some suing and other deciding to sign deals with OpenAI to license their content to the company. The AI algorithms behind products like ChatGPT are trained on vast amounts of data taken from the public internet. AI companies including OpenAI, Google and Microsoft, who've all launched AI products, insist that this practice is legal under fair use, a concept in copyright law that allows the re-use of copyrighted material if it is sufficiently altered. Canadian copyright law has a similar concept, called fair dealing. But a growing group of news organizations, authors, musicians and artists have been suing AI companies over the use of their content in training, saying that they never gave permission or received payment and that the new AI tools could be used to compete with them and even put them out of business. AI companies including OpenAI and Google have also begun using AI to summarize websites directly in their own sites, potentially upending the economics of the World Wide Web. "OpenAI's public statements that it is somehow fair or in the public interest for them to use other companies' intellectual property for their own commercial gain is wrong," the Canadian news organizations said in a joint statement. "Journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI using other companies' journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It's illegal." A spokesperson for OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Canada has been at the center of fights over Big Tech and journalism before. In 2023, Canada passed a law forcing Google and Meta to pay for news posted on their platforms, triggering a massive battle with the two Big Tech companies that led to Meta permanently blocking news on its apps in the country.

Canadian News Publishers Sue OpenAI Over Alleged Copyright Infringement

OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) -- A coalition of Canadian news publishers, including The Canadian Press, Torstar, Globe and Mail, Postmedia and CBC/Radio-Canada, has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for using news content to train its ChatGPT generative artificial intelligence system. The outlets said in a joint statement Friday that OpenAI regularly breaches copyright by scraping large amounts of content from Canadian media. "OpenAI is capitalizing and profiting from the use of this content, without getting permission or compensating content owners," the statement said. The publishers argue that OpenAI practices undermine the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in journalism, and that content is protected by copyright. "News media companies welcome technological innovations. However, all participants must follow the law, and any use of intellectual property must be on fair terms," the statement said. Generative AI can create text, images, videos and computer code based on a simple prompt, but the systems must first study vast amounts of existing content. OpenAI didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the lawsuit. This is the first such case in Canada, though numerous lawsuits are underway in the United States, including a case by the New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft. Some news organizations have chosen to collaborate rather than fight with OpenAI by signing deals to get compensated for sharing news content that can be used to train its AI systems. The Associated Press is among the news organizations that have made licensing deals over the past year with OpenAI; others include The Wall Street Journal and New York Post publisher News Corp., The Atlantic, Axel Springer in Germany and Prisa Media in Spain, France's Le Monde newspaper and the London-based Financial Times. Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

OpenAI sued by Canada's biggest media outlets

"OpenAI's public statements that it is somehow fair or in the public interest for them to use other companies' intellectual property for their own commercial gain is wrong," National Post owner Postmedia said in a statement. "Journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI using other companies' journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It's illegal." The group is seeking damages, and an injunction against OpenAI from using the companies' news articles to train its AI models in the future. According to The Guardian, the plaintiffs want up to C$20,000 for each article used by OpenAI, which could add up to billions of dollars if they win their lawsuit. OpenAI has relied on an interpretation of "fair use," which allows the unlicensed use of copyrighted material under certain circumstances, in its response to these various lawsuits.

OpenAI Sued by Top Canadian News Publishers for Copyright Breach

Five Canadian news media publishers have sued OpenAI Inc. for breaching copyright by scraping content to train artificial intelligence products like ChatGPT -- opening another front against the $157 billion startup. Torstar Corp., Postmedia Network Canada Corp., Globe and Mail Inc., the Canadian Press and CBC/Radio-Canada filed the action Thursday in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, seeking damages that would be determined at trial.

OpenAI Faces Fresh Legal Battle As Canadian News Giants Sue ChatGPT-Maker Citing Violation Of Copyright Laws - Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

ChatGPT-parent OpenAI is facing a lawsuit in Canada from a coalition of news publishers, including The Canadian Press, Torstar, Globe and Mail, Postmedia, and CBC/Radio-Canada. What Happened: The lawsuit claims that OpenAI's ChatGPT system has been scraping content from Canadian media, violating copyright laws, reported the Associated Press. The publishers argue that OpenAI benefits financially from this content without proper authorization or compensation, undermining their investments in journalism. They also stress the importance of adhering to legal standards and ensuring fair use of intellectual property. OpenAI, however, asserts that its models are trained on publicly available data and are based on fair use principles. See Also: Nvidia's Journey To The Top With $3.5 Trillion Market Capitalization: How The AI Chip Giant Transformed Post-COVID Why It Matters: This lawsuit is the first of its kind in Canada, although similar legal actions are underway in the U.S. Some news organizations have chosen to partner with OpenAI, securing compensation deals. This includes OpenAI's deal with Condé Nast in August earlier this year, to incorporate content from brands like Vogue and The New Yorker into its products. Subscribe to the Benzinga Tech Trends newsletter to get all the latest tech developments delivered to your inbox. Despite these challenges, OpenAI continues to expand its influence in the AI sector. In October, the AI startup raised $6.6 billion, reaching a valuation of $157 billion. Meanwhile, Canada has introduced legislation requiring tech giants like Alphabet Inc.'s GOOG GOOGL Google, and Meta Platforms, Inc. META to pay news publishers. Earlier this week, Canada's Competition Bureau also initiated legal proceedings against Google, accusing the tech giant of engaging in anti-competitive practices within the online advertising sector. Check out more of Benzinga's Consumer Tech coverage by following this link. Read Next: As Nvidia Maintains Chip Supremacy, Jim Cramer Says Foes Of Semiconductor Giant 'Aren't Really Enemies' Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo courtesy: Shutterstock Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs