Britannica files lawsuit against OpenAI over alleged misuse of reference materials

NEW YORK: Encyclopaedia Britannica and its subsidiary, Merriam-Webster, have initiated legal proceedings against OpenAI in a Manhattan federal court, alleging that the company unlawfully used their reference materials to train artificial intelligence models.

According to the complaint filed on Friday, Britannica claims that OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft, utilized its online articles as well as encyclopedia and dictionary entries to train its flagship chatbot, ChatGPT. The lawsuit further alleges that OpenAI's AI-generated summaries of Britannica's content have "cannibalised" the publisher's web traffic.

This lawsuit is the latest in a series of high-profile legal actions brought by copyright holders, including authors and news organizations, against technology companies accused of using protected material to develop AI systems without obtaining permission. Britannica previously filed a similar lawsuit against the AI startup Perplexity AI last year, which remains ongoing.

AI firms have generally defended their practices by arguing that their use of copyrighted content constitutes fair use, as they claim to transform the original material into something new. However, Britannica's lawsuit asserts that OpenAI unlawfully copied nearly all of its content to train its AI models.

The outcome of this case could have significant implications for the use of copyrighted materials in the development of artificial intelligence technologies, as courts continue to address the boundaries of fair use in the context of rapidly advancing AI capabilities.