A group of news publishers, including major Canadian newspapers, has initiated 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 prominent language AI model named Claude.
According to the statement of claim, Anthropic has leveraged the commercial success of its AI models, expanded its range of services, and secured substantial funding without acquiring a valid license from any of the News Media Companies. The lawsuit, filed on October 6 and initially disclosed by Cartt.ca, highlights that Anthropic has benefited unfairly at the expense of the News Media Companies.
The claim asserts that Anthropic contravened the terms of service of the news media websites and evaded the technological safeguards implemented to prevent content replication. The news outlets, responsible for producing a significant portion of Canada’s journalistic content, claim that Anthropic engaged in unauthorized scraping of text data from their websites to fuel its AI models and services.
Moreover, the legal action alleges that Anthropic continuously scrapes content in response to user requests, utilizing the extracted material without consent for AI model development. Despite concerns raised by various content creators and previous legal challenges, Anthropic has not taken measures to cease its alleged unlawful activities.
Additionally, the same consortium of companies, in collaboration with CBC/Radio-Canada, launched a lawsuit against OpenAI in 2024, which remains unresolved. This legal battle mirrors similar actions taken by news publishers globally, such as The New York Times, which sued OpenAI for copyright infringement, with the Justice Department recently supporting the tech company in a related case.
The ongoing legal dispute between the news publishers and Anthropic underscores the growing tension between traditional media entities and AI technology companies over intellectual property rights and content usage.