Copyright infringements: Canada's largest media organizations sue OpenAI

A broad coalition of major Canadian news organizations filed a lawsuit against OpenAI with the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario on Friday. The parties include newspaper publishers and broadcasters such as the Toronto Star, Metroland Media, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press and CBC. They accuse the US company, which specializes in artificial intelligence (AI), of using news articles to train its ChatGPT system in violation of copyright. The coalition is demanding compensation, the surrender of all profits that OpenAI has made from the use of the media articles and a temporary injunction.

"Journalism is in the public interest," the plaintiffs write in a joint statement. On the contrary, OpenAI is using the press products of other companies for its "own commercial advantage". "This is illegal", the media organizations emphasize. They invested "hundreds of millions of dollars in reporting critical stories from Canada" and carried out investigative research, the statement continues. The content produced is fact-checked, well-researched and reliable. Last but not least, they are also protected by copyright.

According to the media makers involved, they welcome technological innovations. However, the law must be observed: "Any use of intellectual property must be subject to fair conditions." OpenAI "regularly violates copyright and online terms of use by collecting large amounts of content from Canadian media to develop its products such as ChatGPT". OpenAI profits from this without asking permission or compensating the content owners.

20,000 US dollars in damages per article

According to the Toronto Star, the co-plaintiffs are seeking damages of up to 20,000 US dollars for each article used by OpenAI. This could increase the total value of the lawsuit to several billion dollars. Various lawsuits are already pending against the ChatGPT provider – and to some extent its partner Microsoft – from authors and media companies such as the New York Times. Lawyers for the US newspaper are accusing OpenAI technicians of deleting evidence. Co-founder Elon Musk is also taking legal action against the company, which is valued at around 157 billion US dollars.

The Copyright Initiative (IU) recently found that a study it commissioned provided evidence that the reproduction of works using generative artificial intelligence (AI) models such as ChatGPT or Gemini from Google constitutes copyright-relevant reproduction. The resulting training of the systems is therefore not permitted without consent and remuneration. OpenAI has concluded license agreements and other deals with Axel Springer, Associated Press, NewsCorp and Condé Nast, among others.

(nie)