Canada's largest media outlets, including the owners of the National Post and Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, and CBC/Radio-Canada, have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging the company's "inappropriate and illegal" use of their journalism to power its GPT model.

The lawsuit, filed on November 29, 2024, claims that OpenAI infringed on the media companies' copyrights by using their news articles to train its AI models, including ChatGPT, without seeking permission or offering compensation. The plaintiffs are seeking damages and an injunction against OpenAI from using their content in the future.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal actions taken by media companies against OpenAI and other AI startups that have scraped large swaths of the open web to train their language models. Similar lawsuits have been filed by US-based media groups, including the New York Times and Center for Investigative Journalism, as well as a group of eight publications owned by hedge fund Alden Global Capital.

OpenAI has relied on an interpretation of "fair use," which allows the unlicensed use of copyrighted material under certain circumstances, in its response to these lawsuits. However, the Canadian media companies argue that OpenAI's use of their content is not fair use and is instead a commercial exploitation of their intellectual property.

"OpenAI's public statements that it is somehow fair or in the public interest for them to use other companies' intellectual property for their own commercial gain is wrong," said Postmedia, owner of the National Post, in a statement. "Journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI using other companies' journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It's illegal."

The lawsuit seeks damages of up to C$20,000 for each article used by OpenAI, which could add up to billions of dollars if the plaintiffs win their lawsuit. The outcome of the lawsuit could have significant implications for the AI industry, which has relied heavily on scraping the web to train its language models.

Not all media companies have taken a confrontational approach to OpenAI, however. Some, including The Associated Press, Axel Springer, the Financial Times, Dotdash Meredith, News Corp, Vox Media (The Verge's parent company), The Atlantic, and Time, have struck deals with OpenAI to license their content to the AI startup.

"We collaborate closely with news publishers, including in the display, attribution and links to their content in ChatGPT search, and offer them easy ways to opt out should they so desire," said OpenAI spokesperson Jason Deutrom in a statement.

The lawsuit highlights the ongoing tension between the AI industry and the media companies whose content they rely on. As AI models become increasingly sophisticated, the question of how to balance the need for training data with the rights of content creators will only continue to grow in importance.

In the meantime, the outcome of the lawsuit will be closely watched by both the AI and media industries, as it could have significant implications for the future of language models and the way they are trained.