TECH NEWS – Some major Canadian media and news agencies believe OpenAI has violated their copyrights. 

The Guardian has reported that several Canadian companies have banded together to sue OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, for using their articles to train its large language models (LLMs). In a statement about the lawsuit, Paul Deegan, president of News Media Canada, wrote: “These artificial intelligence companies are cannibalizing proprietary content and free-riding on the backs of news publishers who invest real money to employ real journalists to produce real stories for real people. They are strip-mining journalism while substantially, unfairly and illegally enriching themselves at the expense of publishers.” 

The lawsuit, filed Friday, seeks a share of OpenAI’s profits from using the companies’ articles, an injunction prohibiting OpenAI from further using the companies’ content, and damages of up to $20,000 per article used by OpenAI to train LLMs. Given the interconnected nature of AI model training and the large number of individual articles likely at issue, OpenAI could be liable for catastrophic damages if the court rules in favor of the media companies. The companies behind the lawsuit are The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, CBC, The Toronto Star, Metroland Media and Postmedia. 

It is exactly copyright law that will be used by the larger companies against the AI companies (because this Canadian lawsuit is probably just the beginning, and many others may be filed against OpenAI later). This is an attempt to prevent AI companies from eating the Internet for two, but in the meantime, let’s not forget that others are also eyeing the company made famous by ChatGPT, with the New York Times, Elon Musk, and even George R.R. Martin leading several artists in filing a class action lawsuit against them. 

We don’t know what will happen yet. 

Source: PCGamer