Canadian information publishers sue OpenAI over alleged copyright infringement

OTTAWA, Ontario — A coalition of Canadian information publishers, including The Canadian Press, Torstar, Globe and Mail, Postmedia and CBC/Radio-Canada, has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for using information content to train its ChatGPT generative artificial intelligence structure.

The outlets said in a joint statement on Friday that OpenAI regularly breaches copyright by scraping large amounts of content from Canadian media.

“OpenAI is capitalizing and profiting from the use of this content, without getting permission or compensating content owners,” the statement said.

The publishers debate that OpenAI practices undermine the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in journalism, and that content is protected by copyright.

“information media companies welcome technological innovations. However, all participants must pursue the law, and any use of intellectual property must be on fair terms,” the statement said.

Generative AI can make text, images, videos and computer code based on a straightforward prompt, but the systems must first study vast amounts of existing content.

OpenAI said in a statement that its models are trained on publicly available data. It said they are “grounded in fair use and related international copyright principles that are fair for creators and back recent concept.”

The business said it collaborates “closely with information publishers, including in the display, attribution and links to their content in ChatGPT search” and offers outlets “straightforward ways to opt-out should they so desire.”

This is the first such case in Canada, though numerous lawsuits are underway in the United States, including a case by the recent York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft.

Some information organizations have chosen to collaborate rather than fight with OpenAI by signing deals to get compensated for sharing information content that can be used to train its AI systems.

The Associated Press is among the information organizations that have made licensing deals over the history year with OpenAI. Others include The Wall Street Journal and recent York Post publisher information Corp., The Atlantic, Axel Springer in Germany and Prisa Media in Spain, France’s Le Monde newspaper and the London-based monetary Times.

Canada has passed a law requiring Google and Meta to compensate information publishers for the use of their content, but has previously declined to declare whether the Online information Act should apply to use by AI systems.

In response to that legislation, Meta pulled information from its platforms in Canada, while Google has reached a deal to pay $100 million Canadian (US$ 71 million) to Canadian information outlets.