Encyclopedia Britannica sues OpenAI over AI training practices

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Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., along with its subsidiary Merriam-Webster, has filed a federal lawsuit in Manhattan against OpenAI LLC, alleging that the AI company improperly used its online reference materials to train ChatGPT.

The complaint claims that OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, incorporated nearly 100,000 articles, encyclopedia entries, and dictionary definitions into its AI models without authorization, creating AI-generated summaries that replicate Britannica’s content “near-verbatim” and divert web traffic from Britannica’s sites.

This lawsuit is part of a growing wave of legal challenges against AI developers from copyright holders, including authors and media outlets, who argue that their work is being exploited without permission. OpenAI and other AI companies have previously defended their practices as fair use, asserting that their systems transform copyrighted content into new forms.

The legal action underscores tensions between traditional publishers and AI developers over intellectual property rights, and could have significant implications for how AI systems are trained and how copyrighted material is used in the future.