A group of news publishers, including major Canadian newspapers, have taken legal action against the AI firm Anthropic in an Ontario court. Postmedia, Torstar, The Globe and Mail, and The Canadian Press allege that Anthropic violated their copyright by utilizing their content to create its advanced language AI model named Claude.
According to the statement of claim, Anthropic has profited from its AI models’ success, expanded its services, and raised substantial funds without obtaining proper licenses from the News Media Companies. The lawsuit, filed on Oct. 6 and initially reported by Cartt.ca, highlights that Anthropic has not responded to requests for comments, and the allegations are yet to be proven in court.
The claim asserts that Anthropic violated the news media websites’ terms of service and bypassed technological protections to prevent content copying. The news outlets emphasize their significant role in generating Canada’s journalistic content, catering to millions of readers. Anthropic allegedly “scrapes” vast amounts of text data from the internet and the Plaintiffs’ Websites to fuel its AI models without consent.
The publishers allege that Anthropic continuously scrapes content in response to user queries, using the unauthorized material for model development. Despite concerns raised by content creators and multiple lawsuits in various industries, Anthropic allegedly persists in its illicit activities.
Notably, the same companies, in collaboration with CBC/Radio-Canada, also initiated legal action against OpenAI in 2024, which remains unresolved. Similarly, news publishers globally have taken legal action against tech firms for employing their articles in training AI systems. For instance, The New York Times sued OpenAI for using its copyrighted material, with the Justice Department recently supporting the tech company in a related case.
CBC/Radio-Canada, Postmedia, Metroland, the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, and The Canadian Press have jointly filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the AI firm of copyright infringement by extracting content from their websites to train its ChatGPT generative artificial intelligence system.