A group of Canadian news publishers has come together to file legal action against OpenAI, alleging its content is being used to develop products like generative artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT.
CBC/Radio-Canada, The Canadian Press, Torstar, Postmedia, and The Globe and Mail released a joint statement Friday morning following the filing of their copyright infringement suit in Ontario Superior Court, which maintains that Delaware-based OpenAI is “unjustly enriching themselves” at the expense of the news media companies.
The suit’s Statement of Claim says in order for OpenAI to obtain the significant quantities of text data needed to develop their GPT models, the company deliberately “scrapes” content from the websites of their news organizations, web-based applications, and/or third party partners, and then uses that proprietary content to develop its GPT models without consent or authorization. The claim says it is then continuing to augment its models on an ongoing basis by accessing, copying, and/or scraping content in response to user prompts.
The suit seeks damages in an amount to be determined at trial, or alternately a settlement of $20,000 per work (or an amount the Court considers just), for the infringement, in addition to a permanent injunction prohibiting the direct or indirect use of its content.
“News media companies invest hundreds of millions of dollars into reporting Canadians’ critical stories, undertaking investigations and original reporting, and distributing media in both official languages in every province and territory across this country,” the media companies’ statement reads. “The content that Canadian news media companies produce is fact-checked, sourced and reliable, producing trusted news and information by, for, and about Canadians. This requires significant investment, and the content produced by news media companies is protected by copyright.”
“News media companies welcome technological innovations. However, all participants must follow the law, and any use of intellectual property must be on fair terms,” the statement continued. “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 using other companies’ journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It’s illegal.”
