Encyclopædia Britannica Sues OpenAI

Encyclopædia Britannica and its subsidiary Merriam-Webster have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in Manhattan federal court. They accuse OpenAI of unlawfully copying nearly 100,000 of their online articles, encyclopedia entries, and dictionary definitions to train its artificial intelligence models, including ChatGPT. The complaint alleges that ChatGPT produces 'near-verbatim' copies of Encyclopædia Britannica's content, thereby 'cannibalizing' its web traffic by diverting users who would otherwise visit its websites. Encyclopædia Britannica also claims trademark infringement, asserting that OpenAI implies permission to reproduce its material and wrongfully cites Encyclopædia Britannica in false AI 'hallucinations'. The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages and a court order to block the alleged infringement. OpenAI has responded by stating its models are trained on publicly available data and operate within fair use principles. This case is part of a growing trend of high-stakes lawsuits filed by copyright owners against tech companies for using their material to train AI systems without permission, with Encyclopædia Britannica having a similar ongoing lawsuit against Perplexity AI.