A group of news publishers, including major Canadian newspapers, has taken legal action against the AI firm 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 to develop its large 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 obtaining a valid license from any of the News Media Companies. The publishers argue that Anthropic has benefited unfairly at their expense.
The lawsuit, initiated on Oct. 6 and first disclosed by the news outlet Cartt.ca, awaits legal proceedings as Anthropic has not issued a response. The claims put forth in the lawsuit remain unproven in court.
The statement of claim asserts that Anthropic violated the terms of service of the news media websites and bypassed technological safeguards implemented to prevent content copying. The publishers emphasize their role in generating a significant portion of Canada’s journalistic content and serving millions of readers across various platforms.
Allegedly, Anthropic engaged in ‘scraping,’ accessing and copying vast amounts of text data from the internet and the Plaintiffs’ Websites without consent. The publishers claim that Anthropic utilized this content to develop its AI models and continues to scrape content in response to user queries.
Despite criticisms and legal challenges from content creators in different sectors, Anthropic has not taken steps to halt its alleged unlawful actions, as stated in the claim. The same group of companies also filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in 2024, alongside CBC/Radio-Canada, which remains unresolved.
Similar actions have been taken by news publishers internationally against tech companies for using their articles to train AI systems. For instance, The New York Times sued OpenAI over the use of its copyrighted material, with the Justice Department recently supporting the tech company in a related case.
The legal battle between the news publishers and Anthropic underscores the ongoing debate surrounding copyright infringement and AI training methodologies.
