Five Canadian News Media Companies Sue OpenAI Over Copyright Breaches
Five Canadian news media companies, including Torstar, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, and CBC/Radio-Canada, have filed a legal action against ChatGPT owner OpenAI, accusing the company of regularly breaching copyright and online terms of use. The case is part of a wave of lawsuits against OpenAI and other tech companies by authors, visual artists, music publishers, and other copyright owners over data used to train generative AI systems.
In a statement, the five Canadian companies claimed that OpenAI was scraping large swaths of content without getting permission or compensating content owners. “Journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI using other companies’ journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It’s illegal,” they stated.
The companies demand damages from OpenAI and a permanent injunction preventing it from using their material without consent. In their statement of claim, they alleged that OpenAI had elected to misappropriate their valuable intellectual property and convert it for its own uses, including commercial uses, without consent or consideration.
OpenAI has responded by stating that its models were trained on publicly available data, grounded in fair use and related international copyright principles that were fair for creators. The company claimed that it collaborates closely with news publishers and offers them easy ways to opt out if they so desire.
