A group of news organizations, including major Canadian newspapers, has taken legal action against Anthropic, an AI company, in an Ontario court. Postmedia, Torstar, The Globe and Mail, and The Canadian Press allege that Anthropic violated their copyright by utilizing their content in the development of its advanced language AI model named Claude.
According to the statement of claim, Anthropic has profited from the success of its AI models, expanded its range of services, and raised substantial funds without obtaining a proper license from any of the News Media Companies. The lawsuit, filed on October 6 and initially reported by Cartt.ca, highlights that the allegations are yet to be proven in court as Anthropic has not issued a response to the claims.
The statement of claim asserts that Anthropic violated the terms of service of the news media websites and bypassed technological safeguards intended to prevent content duplication. The news outlets emphasize their role in producing a significant portion of Canada’s journalistic content, catering to millions of readers through print and digital platforms.
The claim alleges that Anthropic deliberately extracts vast amounts of text data from the internet and the Plaintiffs’ Websites without permission to feed its AI models. Furthermore, it states that Anthropic continues to scrape content regularly in response to user requests, without authorization.
Despite concerns expressed by various content creators and legal actions in other industries, Anthropic is accused of persisting in its unauthorized activities. The same news organizations, in collaboration with CBC/Radio-Canada, have also initiated legal proceedings against OpenAI in 2024, a case that remains unresolved.
Similar disputes have arisen internationally, with news publishers suing technology companies for using their content to train AI systems. The New York Times, for instance, took legal action against OpenAI for utilizing its copyrighted material, a case in which the Justice Department recently supported the tech company.