Several Canadian news companies have taken OpenAI to court, accusing the ChatGPT owner of copyright violations.
The five news media companies, which filed a lawsuit against OpenAI last week, have levelled an array of allegations, which range from “strip-mining journalism” to unauthorised use of news articles and other journalistic work for the training of the AI chatbot, ChatGPT.
The lawsuit demands a share of profits OpenAI might have made using the litigants’ work, punitive damages, as well as an order to prohibit OpenAI from using news articles produced by the media outlets.
The companies that have ranged against OpenAI are Torstar, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, and CBC. They have accused OpenAI of using their work without authorisation or compensation.
“Rather than seek to obtain the information legally, OpenAI has elected to brazenly misappropriate the News Media Companies’ valuable intellectual property and convert it for its own uses, including commercial uses, without consent or consideration,” the companies said in their complaint.
OpenAI, on the other hand, has responded by saying that the firm trains its products on publicly available data. “We collaborate closely with news publishers, including in the display, attribution and links to their content in ChatGPT search, and offer them easy ways to opt out should they so desire,” the firm said, as quoted by Reuters.
“These artificial intelligence companies cannibalize proprietary content and are free-riding on the backs of news publishers who invest real money to employ real journalists who produce real stories for real people,” Paul Deegan, president of News Media Canada, said in a statement.
OpenAI is backed my Microsoft, which has not been named in the suit.
