Encyclopedia Britannica sues OpenAI over alleged copyright infringement of 100,000 articles

The dictionary sues OpenAI | TechCrunch

Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging in its complaint that the AI giant has committed "massive copyright infringement." Britannica, which owns Merriam-Webster, retains the copyright to nearly 100,000 online articles, which have been scraped and used to train OpenAI's LLMs without permission, the publisher alleges in the lawsuit. Britannica also accuses OpenAI of violating copyright laws when it generates outputs that contain "full or partial verbatim reproductions" of its content and when the AL lab uses its articles in ChatGPT's RAG (retrieval augmented generation) workflow. OpenAI's RAG tool is how the LLM scans the web or other databases for newly updated information when responding to a query. Britannica also alleges that OpenAI violates the Lanham Act, a trademark statute, when it generates made-up hallucinations and attributes them falsely to the publisher. "ChatGPT starves web publishers like [Britannica] of revenue by generating responses to users' queries that substitute, and directly compete with, the content from publishers like [Britannica]," the lawsuit reads. Britannica also alleges ChatGPT's hallucinations jeopardize "the public's continued access to high-quality and trustworthy online information." Britannica joins a number of other publishers and writers in pursuing legal action against OpenAI over copyright issues. The New York Times, Ziff Davis (owner of Mashable, CNET, IGN, PC Mag, and others), and more than a dozen newspapers across the US and Canada, including the Chicago Tribune, the Denver Post, the Sun-Sentinel, the Toronto Star, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation have sued OpenAI. A similar Britannica lawsuit against Perplexity is still pending. There is not a strong legal precedent that establishes whether or not using copyrighted content to train an LLM is copyright infringement or not. But in one particular instance, Anthropic successfully convinced federal judge William Alsup that this use case -- using the content as training data -- is transformative enough to be legal. However, Alsup argued that Anthropic violated the law by illegally downloading millions of books, rather than paying for them, which warranted a $1.5 billion class action settlement for impacted writers. OpenAI did not respond to TechCrunch's request for comment before publication.

Encyclopedia Britannica is suing OpenAI for allegedly 'memorizing' its content with ChatGPT

The lawsuit goes on to include examples of responses from OpenAI's models side by side with Britannica's text, in which entire passages appear to match word for word. Britannica also claims that OpenAI has been "cannibalizing" its web traffic by generating responses that "substitute, or directly compete" with Britannica's content, rather than directing users to its website the way a traditional search engine would. It's the latest in a growing series of copyright lawsuits from publishers aimed at AI companies over the past several years. The New York Times has made similar claims in its ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI, including accusing the AI company of copying mass amounts of its copyrighted content. In September, Anthropic settled a class action lawsuit for using copyrighted books to train its AI models, resulting in a $1.5 billion payout to the books' authors.

Encyclopedia Britannica sues OpenAI over AI training

March 16 (Reuters) - Encyclopedia Britannica and its Merriam-Webster subsidiary have sued OpenAI in Manhattan federal court for allegedly misusing their reference materials to train its artificial intelligence models. Britannica said in the complaint, opens new tab filed on Friday that Microsoft-backed OpenAI used its online articles and encyclopedia and dictionary entries to teach its flagship chatbot ChatGPT to respond to human prompts and "cannibalized" Britannica's web traffic with AI-generated summaries of ⁠its content. Spokespeople for the companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the complaint on Monday. The case is one of many high-stakes lawsuits filed by copyright owners including authors and news outlets against tech companies for using their material to train AI systems without permission. Britannica filed a related lawsuit against artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI last year that is still ongoing. AI companies ⁠have argued that their systems make fair use of copyrighted content by transforming it into something new. Britannica's lawsuit said that OpenAI unlawfully copied nearly 100,000 of its articles to train GPT large language models. ⁠The complaint said that ChatGPT produces "near-verbatim" copies of Britannica's encyclopedia entries, dictionary definitions and other content, diverting users who would otherwise visit its ⁠websites. Britannica also accused OpenAI of infringing its trademarks by implying that it has permission to reproduce its material and wrongfully ⁠citing Britannica in false AI "hallucinations." Britannica requested an unspecified amount of monetary damages and a court order blocking the alleged infringement. Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Kirsten Donovan Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Artificial Intelligence * Data Privacy * Intellectual Property Blake Brittain Thomson Reuters Blake Brittain reports on intellectual property law, including patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets, for Reuters Legal. He has previously written for Bloomberg Law and Thomson Reuters Practical Law and practiced as an attorney.

Encyclopedia Britannica sues OpenAI for copyright and trademark infringement

OpenAI has been hit with another lawsuit. This time, Encyclopedia Britannica took legal action against OpenAI, accusing the company of copyright and trademark infringements, as first reported by Reuters. More specifically, Britannica alleged that OpenAI illegally used its "copyrighted content at a massive scale" when training its AI models. Not just with training, the encyclopedia company claimed that ChatGPT's responses to user queries sometimes contain "full or partial verbatim reproductions of [Britannica's] copyright articles." Along with claims of copyright violations, Britannica argued that OpenAI was also responsible for trademark infringement. According to the lawsuit, ChatGPT generates "made-up content or 'hallucinations' and falsely attributes them" to Encyclopedia Britannica. The lawsuit doesn't specify an amount for monetary damages, but Britannica is also seeking an injunction to prevent OpenAI from repeating these accusations. When reached out for comment, a spokesperson for OpenAI told Engadget that, "ChatGPT helps enhance human creativity, advance scientific discovery and medical research, and enable hundreds of millions of people to improve their daily lives. Our models empower innovation, and are trained on publicly available data and grounded in fair use." It's not the first time that Britannica has filed a lawsuit against an AI company. In September, the company, which owns Merriam-Webster, also sued Perplexity for similar reasons. On the other side, OpenAI is still embroiled in a legal battle with The New York Times, which also sued the AI giant for copyright infringement.

Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster sue OpenAI

Filed in New York on 13 March 2026, the complaint accuses OpenAI of using the reference publishers' content as AI training data without permission, then generating responses that reproduce it verbatim, six months after the same companies sued Perplexity on nearly identical grounds. Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster have filed a copyright and trademark lawsuit against OpenAI in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that ChatGPT has been trained on and continues to reproduce their copyrighted content without authorisation, to the material detriment of both publishers. The complaint, filed on 13 March 2026 (case no. 1:2026cv02097), accuses OpenAI of using nearly 100,000 of Britannica's online articles as training inputs for its AI language models. The full extent of the copying, the complaint acknowledges, is only known to OpenAI itself. Britannica, which owns Merriam-Webster as a subsidiary, argues that the law does not permit OpenAI's systematic disregard for its intellectual property rights and calls on it to account for the substantial harm it is causing and the profits it is reaping through that infringement. "ChatGPT then provides narrative responses to user queries that often contain verbatim or near-verbatim reproductions, summaries, or abridgements of original content, including plaintiffs' copyrighted works." - from the complaint. The lawsuit is structured around two legal pillars, both of which mirror the framework the same plaintiffs used when they sued AI search engine Perplexity in September 2025. The first is copyright infringement under the Copyright Act of 1976, which gives authors the exclusive right to reproduce and distribute their works. Britannica argues OpenAI violated those rights at multiple stages: by scraping its websites to create training inputs, by feeding that content into its models during training, and then by generating outputs that reproduce or closely summarise the originals when users query ChatGPT on topics covered by Britannica's editorial catalogue. The second pillar is trademark law under the Lanham Act. By presenting AI-generated responses, which may contain inaccuracies or hallucinations, alongside Britannica's and Merriam-Webster's famous trademarks and brand identities, the complaint argues that OpenAI misleads users into believing that Britannica or Merriam-Webster has endorsed or is the source of those responses. Britannica's reputation rests on accuracy built over more than 250 years; associating that brand with AI-fabricated information, the complaint contends, causes direct reputational harm that goes beyond copyright loss alone. The underlying commercial argument follows the logic established in the broader wave of publisher lawsuits against AI companies. Britannica's business today is primarily digital, built on subscriptions and advertising revenue that depend on web traffic. When ChatGPT answers a user's question about, say, the causes of the French Revolution or the properties of a chemical element using content sourced from Britannica's articles, those users have less reason to visit Britannica's website directly. The complaint describes ChatGPT as taking a free ride on Britannica's trusted, high-quality content, shifting the value of that content to OpenAI without compensation. Britannica discontinued its 32-volume print edition in 2012, fully pivoting to digital. That transition made the quality and exclusivity of its editorial content, produced by researchers, writers, and editors working to standards the brand has maintained since its founding in Edinburgh in 1768, the central asset of the business. The complaint frames OpenAI's alleged copying not merely as a legal violation but as an existential threat to a model that cannot survive if the economic returns from that content flow to AI platforms rather than to its creators. This is not Britannica's first such case. In September 2025, the same plaintiffs, Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster, filed an essentially parallel complaint against Perplexity, the AI-powered answer engine. That complaint, also lodged in the SDNY, alleged that Perplexity's system scraped Britannica's content to build its responses in real time, bypassing robots.txt protections and presenting verbatim or near-verbatim reproductions under the guise of AI-generated summaries. The Perplexity case is still proceeding. The OpenAI case is structurally similar, but arrives in a significantly more complex legal landscape. OpenAI is already the subject of a large multidistrict litigation (MDL) in the SDNY, currently overseen by Judge Sidney Stein, that consolidates more than a dozen copyright lawsuits brought by news publishers including the New York Times. That MDL is approaching the close of fact discovery, with no fair use ruling expected before summer 2026 at the earliest. Analysts tracking the litigation landscape, including the ChatGPT Is Eating the World legal tracker, have noted that the Britannica-OpenAI case will very likely be transferred to that MDL and then stayed pending its outcome, meaning a resolution on the merits could be years away. For now, the complaint brings the total number of copyright lawsuits filed against AI companies in the United States to 91, according to the same tracker. OpenAI had not publicly responded to the complaint at the time of writing. The Britannica filing lands in a market where the legal and licensing approaches to AI content are diverging sharply. At the same time as publishers are suing, a growing number of media organisations have signed licensing deals with AI companies, News Corp signed a deal with Meta worth up to $50 million per year in March 2026; UK publisher Reach agreed a usage-based deal with Amazon for its Nova AI model the same month. The Anthropic copyright case (Bartz v. Anthropic), involving the use of pirated books for AI training, reached a $1.5 billion class action settlement in 2025, the largest in the AI copyright litigation wave so far, establishing that these cases can produce significant financial consequences.

Encyclopedia Britannica is the latest giant to sue OpenAI

Encyclopedia Britannica is suing OpenAI for allegedly misusing its reference materials to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models. The Chicago-based Britannica Group runs Britannica.com and Merriam-webster.com, the online version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Creator of the 250-year-old Encyclopaedia Britannica, the company ended its print edition in 2012, survived Wikipedia, and has since focused on educational software and digital growth, including selling artificial intelligence agent software, according to The New York Times. Britannica had acquired Melingo AI in 2000, which offers "AI-powered solutions and natural-language processing" in multiple languages by leveraging artificial intelligence and computational linguistics, according to Britannica's website. The Britannica Group alleges OpenAI -- which is backed by Microsoft -- used information from its encyclopedia and dictionary to train its AI chatbot ChatGPT. The problem is, OpenAI now automatically generates AI summaries of that content on its own platform, which is resulting in Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster's own web traffic plummeting.

Encyclopedia Britannica Sues OpenAI Over AI Training

March 16 (Reuters) - Encyclopedia Britannica ⁠and ⁠its Merriam-Webster subsidiary ⁠have sued OpenAI in Manhattan federal court for allegedly misusing their reference materials to train its artificial intelligence models. Britannica said in the complaint filed on Friday that Microsoft-backed OpenAI used its online ⁠articles ⁠and encyclopedia and dictionary entries to teach its flagship chatbot ChatGPT to respond to human prompts and "cannibalized" Britannica's web traffic with AI-generated summaries of its content. Spokespeople for the companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the complaint ⁠on Monday. The ⁠case is one of ⁠many high-stakes lawsuits filed by copyright owners including authors and news outlets against tech companies for ⁠using their material to train AI systems without permission. Britannica filed a related lawsuit against artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI last year that is still ongoing. AI companies have argued that ⁠their systems make fair use of copyrighted content by transforming ⁠it into something new. Britannica's lawsuit said that OpenAI unlawfully copied nearly 100,000 of its articles to train GPT large language models. The complaint said that ChatGPT produces "near-verbatim" copies of Britannica's encyclopedia entries, dictionary definitions and other content, diverting users who would otherwise visit its websites. Britannica also accused OpenAI of infringing its trademarks by ⁠implying that it has permission to reproduce its material and wrongfully citing Britannica in false AI "hallucinations." Britannica requested an unspecified amount of monetary damages and a court order blocking the alleged infringement. (Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)

Encyclopedia Britannica sues OpenAI over AI training

Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster have sued OpenAI. They allege OpenAI used their reference materials without permission to train AI models like ChatGPT. Britannica claims OpenAI copied nearly 100,000 articles. The lawsuit states AI-generated summaries are diverting users from Britannica's websites. Britannica seeks monetary damages and a court order to stop the alleged infringement. Encyclopedia Britannica and its Merriam-Webster subsidiary have sued OpenAI in Manhattan federal court for allegedly misusing their reference materials to train its artificial intelligence models. Britannica said in the complaint filed on Friday that Microsoft-backed OpenAI used its online articles ⁠and encyclopedia ⁠and dictionary entries to teach its flagship chatbot ChatGPT to respond to human prompts and "cannibalized" Britannica's web traffic with AI-generated summaries of its content. Spokespeople for the companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the complaint on Monday. The case is one of many ⁠high-stakes lawsuits filed by copyright owners including authors and news outlets against tech companies for using their material ⁠to train AI systems without permission. Britannica filed a related lawsuit against artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI last year that is still ongoing. AI companies have argued that their systems make fair use of copyrighted content by transforming it into something new. Britannica's lawsuit said that OpenAI unlawfully copied nearly 100,000 of its articles to train GPT large language models. The complaint said that ChatGPT produces "near-verbatim" copies of Britannica's encyclopedia entries, ⁠dictionary definitions and other content, diverting users who would otherwise visit its websites. Britannica also accused OpenAI of infringing its trademarks by implying that it has permission to reproduce its material and wrongfully citing Britannica in false AI "hallucinations." Britannica requested an unspecified amount of monetary damages and a court order blocking the alleged infringement.

Encyclopedia Britannica sues OpenAI over AI training

March 16 (Reuters) - Encyclopedia Britannica and its Merriam-Webster subsidiary have sued OpenAI in Manhattan federal court for allegedly misusing their reference materials to train its artificial intelligence models. Britannica said in the complaint filed on Friday that Microsoft-backed OpenAI used its online articles and encyclopedia and dictionary entries to teach its flagship chatbot ChatGPT to respond to human prompts and "cannibalized" Britannica's web traffic with AI-generated summaries of its content. Spokespeople for the companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the complaint on Monday. The case is one of many high-stakes lawsuits filed by copyright owners including authors and news outlets against tech companies for using their material to train AI systems without permission. Britannica filed a related lawsuit against artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI last year that is still ongoing. AI companies have argued that their systems make fair use of copyrighted content by transforming it into something new. Britannica's lawsuit said that OpenAI unlawfully copied nearly 100,000 of its articles to train GPT large language models. The complaint said that ChatGPT produces "near-verbatim" copies of Britannica's encyclopedia entries, dictionary definitions and other content, diverting users who would otherwise visit its websites. Britannica also accused OpenAI of infringing its trademarks by implying that it has permission to reproduce its material and wrongfully citing Britannica in false AI "hallucinations." Britannica requested an unspecified amount of monetary damages and a court order blocking the alleged infringement. (Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)