Five of Canada’s largest news organizations, including CBC, the Globe and Mail, and Postmedia, are accusing OpenAI of scraping articles to train AI models like ChatGPT.
What happened: A new lawsuit alleges that the AI company, now valued at US$157 billion, has “unjustly enriched” itself at the expense of publishers and their staff. The group is asking for billions of dollars in compensation and for the company to stop using their content.
Catch-up: OpenAI has struck deals with several publishers to use their content in training data, including Condé Nast, The Associated Press, and the Financial Times, but still largely relies on tools that scrape the internet for information, arguing that it constitutes ‘fair use.’
- Companies that build AI have asked for exemptions to pay or obtain permission from content producers, claiming that licensing would slow down Canada’s AI industry.
- In the last year, the New York Times sued both OpenAI and Microsoft over copyright infringement, as did eight daily U.S. newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital.
Why it matters: Canadian copyright laws allow for the use of protected intellectual property for research and educational purposes, but have not been updated to reflect the wave of generative AI. The case in front of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice could change that.—SB