Top Canadian news outlets sue OpenAI over copyright infringement

Five leading Canadian news outlets filed a lawsuit against OpenAI on Friday, accusing 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, 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 that 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 also pushed back on the claims of that lawsuit, maintaining training is fair use and outlets are provided an "opt-out."

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 the 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.