Canada’s largest news media alliance is suing OpenAI, the maker of the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, accusing the company of illegally using news articles to train its software.
News organizations including the Toronto Star, Metroland Media, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press and the CBC have joined the lawsuit, which is reportedly the first of its kind in Canada.
“Journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI’s use of other companies’ news for its own commercial gain is not. It is illegal,” the media organizations said in a joint statement.
OpenAI says its models are “trained on publicly available data.”
In a statement to the BBC, the company said the software was “based on fair use and relevant international copyright principles, which are fair to creators and support innovation.”
“We work closely with news publishers, including showing, attributing and linking to their content in ChatGPT searches, and providing them with simple ways to opt out if they wish.”
In the 84-page document, the Canadian Media Alliance accuses OpenAI of ignoring protections such as paywalls or copyright disclaimers designed to prevent unauthorized copying of content.
“OpenAI regularly violates copyright and online terms of use by stealing vast amounts of content from Canadian media to help develop its products, such as ChatGPT,” the companies said.
The group, which includes the publishers of Canada’s top newspapers, is seeking punitive damages of C$20,000 ($14,300; £11,000) for each article they claim was used to illegally train ChatGPT, an amount that could add up to dozens billion dollars.
The news organizations are also asking for an order forcing the company to share profits from the use of its articles and an injunction barring OpenAI from using the articles in the future.
While the lawsuit against OpenAI is the first for a Canadian publisher, it follows similar actions by The New York Times and other publishers in the United States last year. In April, lawyers for the New York Times accused OpenAI of deleting evidence needed for their trial.
In a separate case, the Writers Guild and a group of major writers, including John Grisham, also claimed copyright infringement.
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI was valued at C$219 billion after its latest round of investor funding.
