A group of Canadian news outlets, including CBC/Radio-Canada, Postmedia, Metroland, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and The Canadian Press have launched a joint lawsuit claiming copyright infringement against ChatGPT creator OpenAI.
The lawsuit was filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Friday morning and is looking for punitive damages from OpenAI, along with payment of any profits that the company made from using news articles from the organizations.
It’s also seeking an injunction banning OpenAI from using their news articles in the future.
In a statement, the companies wrote “OpenAI is capitalizing and profiting from the use of this content, without getting permission or compensating content owners,” and claim that OpenAI “regularly breaches copyright” by using content from Canadian media outlets for products such as ChatGPT.
When asked if CBC would stop its employees from using tools such as ChatGPT as a result of the lawsuit, a spokesperson for the Crown corporation declined to answer and referred to the joint statement from the journalistic outlets.
CBC News has requested comment from ChatGPT creator OpenAI.
More to come.
