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A coalition of some of Canada’s biggest media companies is seeking billions of dollars in compensation for what they say is copyright infringement on their work through ChatGPT.
A coalition of Canada’s biggest news organizations is suing OpenAI, the maker of the artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT, accusing the company of illegally using their content in the first case of its kind in the country.
Five of the country’s major news companies, including the publishers of its top newspapers, newswires and the national broadcaster, filed the joint suit in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Friday morning.
While this is the first such lawsuit in Canada, it is similar to a suit brought against OpenAI and Microsoft in the United States in 2023 by The New York Times, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied the suit’s claims.
In response to the Canadian lawsuit, a spokesman for OpenAI said “We have not yet had the opportunity to review the allegations,” but added that “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.”
The Canadian outlets, which include the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and the CBC — the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation — are seeking what could add up to billions of dollars in damages. They are asking for 20,000 Canadian dollars, or $14,700, per article they claim was illegally scraped and used to train ChatGPT.
They are also seeking a share of the profits made by what they claim is OpenAI’s misuse of their content, as well as for the company to stop such practices in the future.