A group of news publishers, including major Canadian newspapers, have 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 create its advanced language AI model named Claude.
According to the statement of claim, Anthropic has benefited financially from its AI models and services without acquiring proper licenses from the news media companies. The lawsuit, initiated on October 6 and first disclosed by Cartt.ca, states that Anthropic has not responded to requests for comments, and the allegations are yet to be proven in court.
The claim asserts that Anthropic violated the terms of service of the news media websites and bypassed technological safeguards put in place to prevent content copying. The news outlets emphasize their role in producing a substantial portion of Canada’s journalistic content and collectively catering to millions of readers.
The statement further alleges that Anthropic engaged in “scraping” vast amounts of text data from the internet and the plaintiffs’ websites without consent to enhance its AI models. It mentions ongoing scraping activities by Anthropic in response to user queries.
In a related legal matter, the same news organizations, in collaboration with CBC/Radio-Canada, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in 2024, which remains unresolved. Similar disputes between news publishers and tech companies over the unauthorized use of content for AI training have occurred globally. For instance, The New York Times sued OpenAI for using its copyrighted material, with the Justice Department recently supporting the tech company in a separate case.
Concerns about Anthropic’s alleged misconduct have been voiced by various content creators and in other lawsuits, yet the company continues its unauthorized practices, as stated in the claim.