Encyclopaedia Britannica files lawsuit against OpenAI over use of content to train AI
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., which owns the encyclopedia of the same name and Merriam-Webster dictionaries, has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI. This is reported by TechCrunch.
The lawsuit states that the company owns copyrights to almost 100,000 online articles that were allegedly used without permission to train a language model. OpenAI is also accused of copyright infringement because the system may partially or completely reproduce materials belonging to Britannica when generating answers.
It is separately indicated that encyclopedia articles are used in the ChatGPT augmented search engine. According to the plaintiff, the creation of fictional answers with a reference to the publisher violates Langham’s law and trademark rules.
The company emphasizes that ChatGPT creates competition for content from publishers such as Britannica, since it provides users with answers instead of going to the original sources. In addition, “the public’s continued access to high-quality, accurate online information” could be at risk due to AI errors.
Similar lawsuits against OpenAI have previously been filed by a number of media companies, including The New York Times, as well as more than a dozen newspapers in the United States and Canada, including the Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, Sun Sentinel, Toronto Star, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In addition, a similar case, Britannica v. Perplexity, is pending.
