A group of news organizations, including major Canadian newspapers, has taken legal action against the artificial intelligence company Anthropic in an Ontario court. Postmedia, Torstar, The Globe and Mail, and The Canadian Press allege that Anthropic violated their copyright by utilizing their content in the development of its large language AI model named Claude.
According to the statement of claim, Anthropic has benefited financially from its AI models’ success, expanding its range of services and securing significant funding without obtaining proper licensing from any of the news media companies. The lawsuit, filed on October 6 and initially reported by Cartt.ca, highlights allegations that Anthropic has unlawfully profited at the expense of the news outlets.
The claim asserts that Anthropic violated the terms of service of the news media websites and bypassed their protective measures designed to prevent content copying. It states that the news organizations are key contributors to Canada’s journalistic landscape, serving millions of readers with a wide range of news content.
Furthermore, the claim accuses Anthropic of “scraping” substantial amounts of text data from the internet and the plaintiffs’ websites without authorization to feed its AI models. The news outlets claim that Anthropic continues to scrape content ongoingly in response to user requests without consent.
Despite previous concerns raised by content creators and legal actions against Anthropic, the statement of claim indicates that the company has not taken steps to rectify its alleged unlawful practices. The same news organizations, in collaboration with CBC/Radio-Canada, also filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in 2024, which remains unresolved.
Similar lawsuits by news publishers globally against tech companies for using their content in AI training have been noted. For instance, The New York Times sued OpenAI for using its copyrighted material, with the Justice Department recently supporting the tech company in a related case.
Overall, the legal dispute between the news publishers and Anthropic underscores the ongoing challenges and debates surrounding copyright infringement in the digital age.