A group of news publishers, 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 to develop its large language AI model named Claude.
According to the statement of claim, Anthropic has benefited financially from its AI models’ success without obtaining proper licenses from the news media companies. The lawsuit was filed on October 6 and was initially disclosed by Cartt.ca. Anthropic has not issued a response to the claims, and it should be noted that the allegations have not yet been proven in court.
The publishers assert that Anthropic violated the terms of service of the news media websites and bypassed protective measures intended to prevent content copying. The claim emphasizes that the news outlets are significant contributors to Canada’s journalistic landscape, serving millions of readers through various platforms.
The statement further alleges that Anthropic collected vast amounts of text data from the internet and the plaintiffs’ websites through scraping techniques without consent. This content was then utilized to enhance Anthropic’s AI models, with ongoing scraping activities in response to user requests.
Despite concerns raised by various content creators and legal actions against Anthropic, the statement of claim states that the company has not taken steps to cease its alleged unlawful activities. Additionally, the same news companies, in collaboration with CBC/Radio-Canada, initiated a lawsuit against OpenAI in 2024, which remains unresolved.
Similar legal disputes have occurred internationally, with news publishers suing tech firms for using their articles in AI training. For instance, The New York Times took legal action against OpenAI for using its copyrighted material, and the Justice Department recently sided with the tech company in a related case.