Canadian Media Outlets Sue OpenAI Over Copyright Infringement
UPDATED with statement from OpenAI: A coalition of Canada’s leading news media companies have sued OpenAI for “scraping large swaths of content from Canadian media to help develop its products, such as ChatGPT.”
Torstar, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, and CBC/Radio-Canada today filed a legal action against OpenAI. In a statement released by Postmedia, the organizations accuse OpenAI for regularly [breaching] copyright and online terms of use by scraping large swaths of content from Canadian media to help develop its products, such as ChatGPT.”
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“OpenAI is capitalizing and profiting from the use of this content, without getting permission or compensating content owners,” the statement continues.
The joint lawsuit was filed this morning with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
An OpenAI spokeperson released the following statement to Deadline in response to the lawsuit:
“Hundreds of millions of people around the world rely on ChatGPT to improve their daily lives, inspire creativity, and solve hard problems. Our 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 legal action against Sam Altman’s company claims OpenAI violates copyright laws by “infringing, authorizing, and/or inducing the infringement of the news media companies’ copyright in the owned works.”
“News media companies invest hundreds of millions of dollars into reporting Canadians’ critical stories, undertaking investigations and original reporting, and distributing media in both official languages in every province and territory across this country. The content that Canadian news media companies produce is fact-checked, sourced and reliable, producing trusted news and information by, for, and about Canadians. This requires significant investment, and the content produced by news media companies is copyrighted.”
The suit, filed by attorneys Lenczner Slaght LLP, seeks punitive damages and a share of the profits made by OpenAI from using the news organizations’ articles. The suit also seeks an injunction barring OpenAI from future use of the news articles.
“News Media Companies welcome technological innovations,” the statement reads. “However, all participants must follow the law, and any use of intellectual property must be on fair terms.”
“Journalism is in the public interest,” the statement continues. “OpenAI using other companies’ journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It’s illegal.”
In a statement obtained by Deadline, Paul Deegan, president and CEO of News Media Canada, the national association whose members include the Globe and Mail, Postmedia and Torstar, said, “These artificial intelligence companies cannibalize proprietary content and are free-riding on the backs of news publishers who invest real money to employ real journalists who produce real stories for real people. They are strip mining journalism while substantially, unjustly, and unlawfully enriching themselves to the detriment of publishers.”
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