HomeBritannica Files Lawsuit Against OpenAI Over Unauthorized Use of Articles
In a landmark legal case, the esteemed publishing institution Encyclopaedia Britannica and its subsidiary Merriam-Webster have filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. They allege that OpenAI engaged in the unauthorized use of their copyrighted works to train its artificial intelligence models.
The legal complaint asserts that OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, unlawfully reproduced tens of thousands of proprietary articles, encyclopedia entries, and dictionary definitions to train its flagship system, ChatGPT. The plaintiffs highlight that ChatGPT's generated summaries can be "verbatim" replicas of Encyclopaedia Britannica's original content. This alleged misconduct, they argue, constitutes copyright infringement and employs AI to divert web traffic away from the original sources, resulting in a loss of users.
The lawsuit further raises claims of trademark infringement. The plaintiffs contend that OpenAI improperly references Encyclopaedia Britannica within its AI's outputs, including inaccurate "hallucinations," potentially misleading the public into believing the content carries official endorsement.
Encyclopaedia Britannica is now seeking financial damages from OpenAI and has requested a court injunction to halt the alleged infringing activities. This action marks another significant step by the publisher to defend its intellectual property, following a prior lawsuit against Perplexity AI. It also represents a critical juncture in the ongoing copyright disputes between content creators and leading AI firms. In defense, AI companies typically argue that their utilization of such content qualifies as "fair use."
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In a landmark legal case, the esteemed publishing institution Encyclopaedia Britannica and its subsidiary Merriam-Webster have filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. They allege that OpenAI engaged in the unauthorized use of their copyrighted works to train its artificial intelligence models.
The legal complaint asserts that OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, unlawfully reproduced tens of thousands of proprietary articles, encyclopedia entries, and dictionary definitions to train its flagship system, ChatGPT. The plaintiffs highlight that ChatGPT's generated summaries can be "verbatim" replicas of Encyclopaedia Britannica's original content. This alleged misconduct, they argue, constitutes copyright infringement and employs AI to divert web traffic away from the original sources, resulting in a loss of users.
The lawsuit further raises claims of trademark infringement. The plaintiffs contend that OpenAI improperly references Encyclopaedia Britannica within its AI's outputs, including inaccurate "hallucinations," potentially misleading the public into believing the content carries official endorsement.
Encyclopaedia Britannica is now seeking financial damages from OpenAI and has requested a court injunction to halt the alleged infringing activities. This action marks another significant step by the publisher to defend its intellectual property, following a prior lawsuit against Perplexity AI. It also represents a critical juncture in the ongoing copyright disputes between content creators and leading AI firms. In defense, AI companies typically argue that their utilization of such content qualifies as "fair use."
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