Nov. 30 (UPI) — Several major news outlets in Canada have sued OpenAI, the California-based maker of ChatGPT, for using their content to improve the program’s software.
The coalition includes the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Toronto Star, Canadian Press and Globe and Mail and was filed in the Ontario Superior Court on Friday.
The media agencies are seeking damages of up to $20,000 per article used. The amount could ultimately reach billions of dollars.
They are also asking the court to ban the tech giant from using their content in the future, in what is believed to be the first lawsuit of its kind in Canada.
The news media said the use of their intellectual property “must be on fair terms.”
Court documents show the coalition accuses OpenAI of ignoring copyright disclaimers when accessing its members’ content to train their ChatGPT software.
“OpenAI regularly violates copyright and online terms of use by scraping large amounts of content from Canadian media to help develop its products, such as ChatGPT. OpenAI capitalizes and profits from the use of this content, without obtaining permission or the owners of the content,” the coalition said in a statement.
“OpenAI’s public statements that it is somehow fair or in the public interest for them to use other companies’ intellectual property for their own commercial gain is wrong. Journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI does not use other companies’ journalism for their own commercial gain. It’s illegal.”
In response, OpenAI said it is not breaking any laws.
“We work closely with news publishers, including on the display, attribution and links to their content in ChatGPT search, and provide them with easy ways to unsubscribe if they wish,” the company said in a statement to the CBC.
“Hundreds of millions of people around the world rely on ChatGPT to improve their daily lives, fuel creativity, and solve difficult problems. Our models are trained on publicly available data, based on fair use and related international copyright principles that are fair to creators and support innovation,” a company spokesperson told the Toronto Star.
“We will not stand by while tech companies steal our content. While we embrace the opportunities that technological innovation can bring, all participants must follow the law and any use of our intellectual property must be on fair terms,” said Neil Oliver, head of the company. director of Torstar Corporation, the parent company of the 131-year-old publication, wrote the same story in response.
