Five leading news companies from Canada sue the company responsible for ChatGPT for alleged violation of copyright. It emerged that these five giant companies in Canadian media are moving to open legal actions against OpenAI, one of the greatest companies of an artificial intelligence-based platform such as ChatGPT for making repeated infringements against Canadian copyright.
The plaintiff Torstar, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, and CBC/Radio-Canada claim that OpenAI scraped extensive amounts of journalistic content to train its AI systems without obtaining proper permissions or providing compensation.
"Journalism serves the public interest. OpenAI’s unauthorised use of journalism for commercial purposes is not only unethical but also illegal," the media companies stated in a joint release.
Filed before Ontario's Superior Court of Justice, this case demands damages and permanent injunction to prevent OpenAI from continuing the unauthorized use of copyrighted material.
The current situation in copyright disputes involving the AI industry
This is but one in a line of legal battles waged by the authors, visual artists, and other copyright owners who question the legality of how data collection is being undertaken in order to build up these generative AI systems.
Notably, OpenAI has Microsoft as one of its major financial backers. But the lawsuit filed by the Canadian media outlets does not directly name Microsoft as one of the defendants.
The 84-page legal complaint claims that OpenAI chose to misappropriate the intellectual property of Canadian media companies for commercial gain.
The complaint further asserts that, instead of seeking information legally, OpenAI has brazenly misappropriated the valuable intellectual property of News Media Companies. It further puts across that OpenAI never compensated the companies for the use of their content.
Global Battle
This lawsuit comes following a more recent case in the U.S., where a federal judge dismissed claims of OpenAI misusing articles from the news outlets Raw Story and AlterNet. Meanwhile, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk expands a separate lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft over monopolistic practices in the generative AI market.
OpenAI has not responded to the Canadian lawsuit. This case points out the escalating fight between traditional media companies and AI developers over using their proprietary content in the new world of digital.
With inputs from agencies
Image Source: Multiple agencies
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