Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. has initiated legal proceedings against OpenAI, alleging unauthorized use of its copyrighted material in the development of artificial intelligence models.
The lawsuit, reported by TechCrunch, claims that Britannica holds copyrights for nearly 100,000 online articles that were allegedly used without permission to train OpenAI’s language model. The company contends that OpenAI’s model reproduces content that is protected under copyright law, either in part or in full.
Britannica further asserts that OpenAI employs its articles in the augmented retrieval process used by ChatGPT, generating fictional results and attributing them to the publisher. This, they argue, constitutes a violation of the Lanham Act and trademark law.
The company believes that ChatGPT undermines publishers like Britannica by generating responses that compete directly with their content. They also express concern that the phenomenon known as “AI hallucinations” threatens the public’s access to reliable and high-quality online information.
This lawsuit follows a series of similar legal actions taken by various publishers, including The New York Times and several newspapers across the United States and Canada, such as the Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, Sun Sentinel, and Toronto Star. Britannica is also pursuing a comparable lawsuit against Perplexity.
Encyclopædia Britannica has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming copyright infringement related to the use of its articles in AI training. The case highlights ongoing legal challenges faced by AI companies regarding content attribution and copyright laws.
Source: TechCrunch