A group of major Canadian news organizations filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario. This group includes publishers and broadcasters like Toronto Star, Metroland Media, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, and CBC. They accuse the US company, which specializes in artificial intelligence, of using news articles to train its ChatGPT system without respecting copyright laws. The coalition seeks damages, the return of profits OpenAI made from using the media content, and an injunction.
The plaintiffs state that journalism serves the public interest, contrasting this with OpenAI’s use of press products from other companies for its own commercial gain. They claim this is illegal. The media organizations emphasize that they have invested significant resources into reporting critical stories from Canada and conducting investigative research. The content they produce is fact-checked, well-researched, reliable, and protected by copyright.
While the media creators welcome technological innovations, they stress the importance of respecting the law: “The use of intellectual property must be on fair terms.” They allege that OpenAI regularly violates copyright and online usage terms by collecting large amounts of content from Canadian media to develop products like ChatGPT. OpenAI benefits from this without asking for permission or compensating the content owners.
According to the Toronto Star, the group demands up to $20,000 in damages for each article used by OpenAI. This could increase the total value of the lawsuit to several billion dollars. There are already various lawsuits against the ChatGPT provider and sometimes its partner Microsoft from authors and media houses like the New York Times. Lawyers for the US newspaper accuse OpenAI’s technicians of deleting evidence. Elon Musk, a co-founder, is also taking action against the company, valued at around $157 billion.
A recent study commissioned by the Copyright Initiative (IU) demonstrated that reproducing works through models for generative artificial intelligence like ChatGPT constitutes a copyright-relevant reproduction. Therefore, training these systems without consent and compensation is not permissible.
OpenAI has entered into license agreements and other deals with companies like Axel Springer, Associated Press, NewsCorp, and Condé Nast.