Canadian news companies challenge OpenAI over alleged copyright breaches

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.