A group of news publishers, which features Canada’s largest newspapers, has initiated a lawsuit against the AI firm Anthropic in an Ontario court.
Postmedia, Torstar, The Globe and Mail, and The Canadian Press allege that Anthropic has violated their copyright by utilizing their materials to create its large language AI model, known as Claude.
The lawsuit states, “Anthropic has profited from the commercial success of its AI models, developing a broad range of services and securing substantial funding — all without acquiring a legitimate license from any of the News Media Companies.”
It further claims, “By doing this, Anthropic has been significantly and unfairly enriched at the expense of the News Media Companies.”
This legal action was lodged on October 6 and was initially covered by the news platform Cartt.ca. Anthropic has yet to respond to requests for comments. The claims made in the lawsuit remain unproven in court.
The claim indicates that Anthropic breached the terms of service of the news media websites and circumvented the technological safeguards they established to prevent the copying of their content.
The news organizations assert that they “are responsible for producing a considerable portion of Canada’s journalistic content — from daily printed newspapers to continuous digital news reporting,” and together, they have millions of readers.
“To gather content for incorporation into its models and services, Anthropic intentionally ‘scrapes’ (i.e., accesses and duplicates) vast quantities of text data from the internet, including from the Plaintiffs’ Websites,” the claim details.
The news publishers contend that Anthropic subsequently employs that content, without permission or consent, to enhance its AI models. They also assert that Anthropic continuously scrapes content in reaction to user queries.
CBC/Radio-Canada, Postmedia, Metroland, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, and The Canadian Press have initiated a collective lawsuit against ChatGPT creator OpenAI, claiming the use of news content to train its ChatGPT generative AI system. The media organizations assert that OpenAI violates copyright by ‘scraping content’ from their websites.
The statement of claim indicates that despite various content creators from different sectors expressing concerns through multiple lawsuits and public backlash, Anthropic has failed to take measures to stop its illegal actions.
The same companies, along with CBC/Radio-Canada, also filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in 2024. That case remains unresolved.
Internationally, news publishers have taken legal action against technology companies for utilizing their articles to train AI systems. The New York Times has sued OpenAI over the use of its copyrighted materials, while last month, the Justice Department supported the tech company.
