Canada’s largest news organizations sued OpenAI on Friday, accusing it of using their articles without permission to help train its artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT in a deal that could cost the U.S. company billions.
Media, including The globe And Email newspaper and public broadcaster Radio-Canada has accused OpenAI of violating copyright by “scraping large swaths of content” and profiting from the use of that content, according to a statement.
This was done without permission or compensation from the news organizations, who are seeking $14,700 per article they say was illegally lifted and used to form ChatGPT.
This could put the total value of the claim at several billion dollars.
“Journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI does not use other companies’ journalism for its own commercial benefit. This is illegal,” the coalition said.
An OpenAI spokesperson responded to the lawsuit by stating that its chat box is trained on publicly available data “based on fair use and international copyright principles that are fair to creators and support innovation”.
The company also collaborates with press publishers, the spokesperson added.
This lawsuit is the first filed by Canadian media against OpenAI.
The organizations — which also include Postmedia, The Canadian Press and Torstar, the parent company of the Toronto Star newspaper, according to legal documents — are seeking an injunction to stop the company’s current and future “unauthorized misappropriation” of their work. in San Francisco.
“We will not stand idly by while tech companies steal our content,” Torstar CEO Neil Oliver reportedly wrote in a memo to staff shortly after the court papers were filed.
“As we seize the opportunities that technological innovation can bring, all participants must respect the law and any use of our intellectual property must be on fair terms,” he said.
Generative artificial intelligence gained worldwide attention with the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI in late 2022.
The technology makes it possible to quickly produce videos, images or writings, drawing on available content to respond to requests expressed in everyday language.
While exhilarating some users, it has angered authors, artists and others who believe their creations are being absorbed without being asked or compensated.
Publications such as the New York Times have filed lawsuits to defend their content, while some news organizations have chosen to enter into licensing agreements.