Canadian publishers take OpenAI to court

In the latest legal battle between artificial intelligence and almost everyone else, OpenAI is one more time on the chopping block.

A group of five Canadian news companies, including the National Post, Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press and CBC/Radio-Canada filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging copyright infringement and violation of their online terms of use. Reuters first reported. The group is seeking up to 20,000 Canadian dollars for each article used by OpenAI, The Guardian reported.

“Instead of trying to obtain the information legally, OpenAI chose to misappropriate the valuable intellectual property of news media companies and convert it for its own uses, including for commercial purposes, without consent or consideration.” the file, which The Verge published, shows.

The filing goes on to claim that OpenAI “has capitalized on the commercial success of its GPT models, building an extensive suite of GPT-based products and services and raising significant capital – all without obtaining a valid license from any of the news media companies. In doing so, OpenAI has been substantially and unjustly enriched at the expense of news media companies.” The news companies, they write, received “no form of consideration, including payment, for OpenAI’s use of their work.”

“Journalism is in the public interest,” Torstar, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press and CBC/Radio-Canada said in a statement, according to Reuters. “OpenAI using other companies’ journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It’s illegal.”

In response, OpenAI said that the data on which its models were trained is publicly available and used properly.

“We work closely with news publishers, including displaying, attributing and linking to their content in ChatGPT search, and provide easy ways for them to opt out if they choose to do so,” OpenAI spokesman Jason Deutrom said in a statement for The Verge.