A group of news publishers, including major Canadian newspapers, has 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 develop its large language AI model, known as Claude.
The publishers claim that Anthropic has profited from the success of its AI models, expanding its range of services and securing significant funding, all without obtaining proper licensing from any of the News Media Companies. They assert that Anthropic’s actions have unjustly enriched the company at the expense of the publishers.
The lawsuit, filed on October 6 and first reported by Cartt.ca, states that Anthropic breached the terms of service of the news media websites and bypassed technological safeguards put in place to prevent content copying.
According to the claim, the news outlets are key contributors to Canada’s journalism landscape, catering to millions of readers through print and digital platforms. Anthropic allegedly “scrapes” large volumes of text data from the internet and the Plaintiffs’ Websites without permission to fuel its AI models, continuously scraping content based on user requests.
Despite concerns raised by various content creators in different industries and previous legal actions, the statement of claim notes that Anthropic has not taken steps to address its alleged unlawful behavior.
Additionally, the same publishers, in collaboration with CBC/Radio-Canada, initiated a lawsuit against OpenAI in 2024, which remains unresolved. Similar legal battles have occurred globally, such as The New York Times suing OpenAI for unauthorized use of its copyrighted material, with the Justice Department recently supporting the tech company in a related case.
The ongoing legal disputes highlight the complex intersection between intellectual property rights and AI technology in the digital age.