A group of the country’s largest media organizations including the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and The Globe and Mail filed a lawsuit Thursday against OpenAI that alleges the artificial intelligence company is infringing on copyright by unlawfully scraping news articles to build its models, such as those that power ChatGPT.
The plaintiffs also include Postmedia Network Inc., Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd., Metroland Media Group, the Canadian Press, and Radio-Canada. OpenAI kicked off a wave of generative AI hype when it released ChatGPT two years ago, and is now valued at. The lawsuit claims that OpenAI is making billions of dollars in revenue while misappropriating copyrighted works.
In that time, the news companies have published approximately 16.1-million owned and licensed works at a minimum, according to the statement of claim. The full details of how and when OpenAI allegedly accessed this material isn’t known to the plaintiffs, the lawsuit notes. But how that applies to AI companies building commercial models has proven controversial. The federal government launched a public consultation last fall to seek input on possible changes to the Copyright Act in response to generative AI, including the use of copyrighted material in building models.