Canadian news media companies sue ChatGPT owner OpenAI over copyright breaches: ‘It’s illegal’

The lawsuit is part of a broader wave of legal actions against OpenAI and other tech companies by authors, visual artists, music publishers, and other copyright holders over data used to train generative AI systems. Microsoft, a major backer of OpenAI, is also involved.

In a statement, Torstar, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, and CBC/Radio-Canada claimed that OpenAI has been scraping large amounts of content to develop its products without obtaining permission or compensating the content owners.

“Journalism serves the public interest, but OpenAI using other companies’ journalism for its own commercial gain is not. It’s illegal,” they said.

Paul Deegan, president of News Media Canada, the trade group representing the plaintiffs, accused OpenAI of “strip mining journalism while substantially, unjustly, and unlawfully enriching themselves.”

On November 7, a New York federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against OpenAI, which had claimed the company “misused articles” from Raw Story and AlterNet.

In an 84-page statement of claim filed in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, the five Canadian media companies demanded damages from OpenAI and sought a permanent injunction to prevent it from using their material without consent.

“Instead of obtaining the information legally, OpenAI has chosen to blatantly misappropriate the News Media Companies’ valuable intellectual property and use it for its own, including commercial, purposes, without consent or compensation,” they said in their filing.

“The News Media Companies have never received any form of consideration, including payment, from OpenAI for the use of their works,” they added.

OpenAI’s response

In response, OpenAI said that its models were trained on publicly available data, based on fair use and related international copyright principles that are fair to creators.

An OpenAI spokesperson explained that its models are trained on “publicly available data, grounded in fair use and related international copyright principles.” The company also emphasised its collaboration with news publishers on how their content is displayed, attributed, and linked, and provided options for publishers to opt out.

“We work closely with news publishers, including in the display, attribution, and linking of their content in ChatGPT search, and offer them easy ways to opt out if they wish,” Reuters quoted a spokesperson as saying via email.

The legal filing from the Canadian news companies did not mention Microsoft. This month, billionaire Elon Musk expanded his lawsuit against OpenAI to include Microsoft, accusing the two companies of illegally attempting to monopolise the generative AI market and marginalise competitors.

Late last year, The New York Times Co. sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, claiming the companies used millions of its copyrighted articles to train their AI systems.

(With inputs from Reuters, Bloomberg)