Canadian News Outlets Take Legal Action Against OpenAI: What You Need to Know

A coalition of Canadian news organizations has launched a lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming that the company has violated their copyrights and has benefitted financially without compensating them. The lawsuit was filed on a Friday and includes notable plaintiffs such as the Toronto Star, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the Globe and Mail, among others. The news companies are seeking monetary damages and an injunction to prevent OpenAI from further utilizing their content.
The plaintiffs argue that OpenAI has utilized material scraped from their websites to develop the language models that underpin ChatGPT. They emphasize that this content represents a significant investment of time, resources, and effort by their journalists and staff. In their legal complaint, they assert that instead of obtaining this information through appropriate channels, OpenAI has openly appropriated their valuable intellectual property for its own commercial gain, all without permission or compensation.
OpenAI is also facing similar copyright infringement allegations from various entities, including The New York Times, New York Daily News, and numerous YouTube creators. Some authors, including comedian Sarah Silverman, have joined the fray against OpenAI as well.
While OpenAI has entered into licensing agreements with other publishers, the Canadian news companies involved in this new lawsuit claim that they have never received any form of compensation or agreement for the use of their works by OpenAI.
An OpenAI spokesperson responded by stating that ChatGPT is utilized by millions globally for various beneficial purposes. The spokesperson maintained that the models are trained on publicly available information grounded in fair use and international copyright principles. They also noted that OpenAI actively collaborates with news publishers, providing options to opt-out of data use.
This lawsuit follows a recent study by Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, which found that no publisher has escaped misrepresentations of its material in ChatGPT’s outputs.
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