In a groundbreaking legal move, a coalition of Canada’s leading news organizations, including the Toronto Star, Metroland Media, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, and CBC, has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, the developer behind the AI chatbot ChatGPT. The suit alleges that OpenAI unlawfully utilizes their news articles to train its software, raising significant questions about content ownership, fair use, and the balance of power between technology and journalism.
The news organizations contend that the appropriation of their journalism for commercial gain by OpenAI is not only unethical but also illegal. They expressed their stand in a joint statement, “Journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI using other companies’ journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It’s illegal.”
OpenAI, on the other hand, defends its practices by claiming that its models are developed from “publicly available data.” The company maintains that its operations align with fair use principles and that they work in collaboration with news publishers. “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 stated.
In legal documents spanning 84 pages, the coalition alleges that OpenAI routinely disregards copyright regulations and online terms of use, scraping vast amounts of content from Canadian media to enhance its AI products. The publishers assert that the extent of this content usage violates multiple copyright laws, leading to significant financial losses for the media sector.
The group is seeking punitive damages amounting to C$20,000 (approximately $14,300 or £11,000) for each allegedly infringed article—totaling potentially billions of dollars in compensation. Furthermore, the lawsuit calls for an order obligating OpenAI to share profits derived from the utilization of their articles, in addition to an injunction preventing further improper use of their content.
This legal action is significant in the context of similar challenges faced by media companies in the United States, such as the New York Times, which also initiated lawsuits against OpenAI and other tech companies on allegations of copyright infringement last year.
The controversy raises pressing concerns regarding the intersection of technology and traditional media, emphasizing the need for ethical guidelines and legal protections in the era of artificial intelligence. As OpenAI's market value is reported to have surged to C$219 billion in its latest investment round, the implications of this feud may resonate widely within the media and tech landscapes in Canada and beyond.
