{"id":540722,"date":"2026-03-16T19:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T19:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/540722\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T19:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T19:26:09","slug":"encyclopedia-britannica-sues-openai-over-alleged-ai-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/540722\/","title":{"rendered":"Encyclopedia Britannica sues OpenAI over alleged AI training"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the BlackRock Infrastructure Summit in Washington last week. The company is accused of misusing materials to train its ChatGPT chatbot.Anna Moneymaker\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Encyclopedia Britannica and its Merriam-Webster subsidiary have sued OpenAI in Manhattan federal court for allegedly misusing their reference materials to train its artificial intelligence<\/a> models. <\/p>\n

Britannica said in the complaint filed on Friday that Microsoft-backed OpenAI used its online articles and encyclopedia and dictionary entries to teach its flagship chatbot ChatGPT to respond to human prompts and \u201ccannibalized\u201d Britannica\u2019s web traffic with AI-generated summaries of its content.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur models empower innovation, and are trained on publicly available data and grounded in fair use,\u201d an OpenAI spokesperson said on Monday in response to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Spokespeople and attorneys for Britannica did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday. The case is one of many high-stakes lawsuits filed by copyright owners including authors and news outlets against tech companies for using their material to train AI systems without permission. Britannica filed a related lawsuit against artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI last year that is still ongoing.<\/p>\n

AI companies have argued that their systems make fair use of copyrighted content by transforming it into something new.<\/p>\n

Media outlets win motion for Ontario court to hear OpenAI lawsuit<\/a><\/p>\n

Britannica\u2019s lawsuit said that OpenAI unlawfully copied nearly 100,000 of its articles to train GPT large language models. The complaint said that ChatGPT produces \u201cnear-verbatim\u201d copies of Britannica\u2019s encyclopedia entries, dictionary definitions and other content, diverting users who would otherwise visit its websites.<\/p>\n

Britannica also accused OpenAI of infringing its trademarks by implying that it has permission to reproduce its material and wrongfully citing Britannica in false AI \u201challucinations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Britannica requested an unspecified amount of monetary damages and a court order blocking the alleged infringement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the BlackRock Infrastructure Summit in Washington last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,901,276,277,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-540722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-alberta","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}