Canada’s leading news organizations have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI. They accuse the company of “unjust enrichment” for using news articles to train its popular AI software, ChatGPT. The lawsuit, filed in Ontario’s Superior Court, seeks damages, a share of OpenAI’s profits from the use of the articles, and an injunction to prevent further use of news materials.
Plaintiffs include the Globe and Mail, Canadian Press, CBC, Toronto Star, Metroland Media, and Postmedia. They are seeking up to 20,000 Canadian dollars for each article used by OpenAI. This means a court victory could cost billions.
The defendants are engaged in ongoing, deliberate, and unauthorized use of the plaintiffs’ valuable news materials. The plaintiffs are bringing this lawsuit to prevent and seek compensation for these unlawful actions.
The plaintiffs claim that, in order to obtain large volumes of text data to develop its GPT models, OpenAI deliberately scrapes content from news company websites without consent or permission. However, none of these allegations have yet been tested in court.
