Encyclopaedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster are suing OpenAI over content theft
Encyclopaedia Britannica, along with its subsidiary Merriam-Webster, has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in a federal court in Manhattan.
The platform is accused of illegally using intellectual property to train artificial intelligence language models and of widespread copyright infringement.
The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI used “large volumes of copyrighted content” without permission while training its algorithms.
Representatives of Britannica emphasize that the ChatGPT chatbot not only trains on this data but also produces results that contain “full or partial verbatim reproductions of articles.”
The company’s lawyers claim that Microsoft-backed OpenAI used online articles and dictionary entries to create its flagship product.
This led to the AI “cannibalizing traffic” from Britannica’s official websites by providing users with ready-made summaries instead of the original sources.
According to the case materials, OpenAI illegally copied nearly 100,000 articles to train its GPT series models.
The plaintiffs emphasize that ChatGPT is capable of generating “nearly verbatim” copies of encyclopedic introductions and definitions, which deprives the publisher of potential visitors.
A separate claim in the lawsuit alleges trademark infringement due to so-called “hallucinations” by the artificial intelligence.
The model sometimes mistakenly cites Britannica as a source in incorrect answers, creating the impression that the reputable publisher is disseminating inaccurate information.
OpenAI representatives reject the allegations, insisting on the legitimacy of their development methods.
“Our models promote innovation; they were trained on publicly available data and based on fair use,” a spokesperson for the tech company stated on Monday.
In response to copyright claims, OpenAI emphasizes that ChatGPT helps foster human creativity and advance scientific research.
They believe that transforming content into new digital responses falls under the legal doctrine of fair use.
Britannica is asking the court to order monetary damages, the amount of which has not yet been determined, and to issue an injunction against the further use of their materials.
This case marks another step in the global standoff between traditional media and tech giants developing AI.
As a reminder, Nvidia plans to invest $30 billion in OpenAI.
OpenAI has also blocked a network of ChatGPT accounts linked to the Russian Z-channel “Rybary.”
