Canadian publishers sue OpenAI.
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A group of five Canadian news organizations has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for alleged copyright infringement and violation of their online terms of use. Among these companies are National Post, Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, and CBC/Radio-Canada. The lawsuit, initially reported by Reuters, seeks up to CAD 20,000 for each article that OpenAI is alleged to have used without permission.
In the legal document, published by The Verge, it is stated that OpenAI has improperly opted to appropriate the intellectual property of these companies, using it for commercial gain without the appropriate consent. It is argued that OpenAI has achieved considerable financial success from its GPT models, creating a wide range of products and services based on this technology, all without having acquired a valid license from any of the plaintiff media companies.
The plaintiffs also emphasize that they have not received any compensation in exchange for OpenAI's use of their content. In a joint statement, the organizations asserted that "journalism is a matter of public interest," indicating that OpenAI's use of other companies' journalistic work for its own economic benefit is illegal.
For its part, OpenAI has defended its position, arguing that the data used to train its models was publicly accessible and falls under fair use. A spokesperson for the company, Jason Deutrom, stated that they work closely with news publishers in attribution and linking to their content in ChatGPT searches, and that they provide simple methods for publishers to opt out if they wish.
