OpenAI is facing new legal challenges in Canada. Five major Canadian news media companies, including the Globe and Mail, the Canadian Press, Postmedia, Metroland, the Toronto Star and the CBC/Radio-Canada, have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging copyright infringement and breach of online terms of use. The lawsuit accuses the Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence (AI) startup of using news articles of these news organisations to train its ChatGPT software without authorisation. The media companies claimed that the San Francisco-based startup was “strip-mining journalism” and unjustly profiting from their work. This case joins a growing number of legal actions against OpenAI and other tech companies by copyright holders concerned about the use of their data in AI development.
What OpenAI said about the lawsuit
Responding to the lawsuit, OpenAI noted that its AI models, including ChatGPT, are trained on publicly available data, and their use of this data falls within the boundaries of fair use and international copyright laws. The company also highlighted that its practices are fair to content creators and align with established legal principles.
“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 to the news agency Reuters.
What the lawsuit against OpenAI said
In an 84-page statement of claim submitted to Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice (seen by Reuters), five Canadian news companies sought damages from OpenAI and requested a permanent injunction to stop the use of their material without consent.
The lawsuit filing read: “Journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI using other companies’ journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It’s illegal. “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 News Media Companies have never received from OpenAI any form of consideration, including payment, in exchange for OpenAI’s use of their works.”
The Canadian news companies’ document did not mention Microsoft. In November, billionaire Elon Musk expanded a lawsuit against OpenAI to include Microsoft, alleging the two companies illegally sought to monopolise the market for generative AI and sideline competitors.
Last month, a federal judge in New York dismissed a lawsuit against OpenAI alleging it had improperly used articles from the news outlets Raw Story and AlterNet.