News publishers’ copyright lawsuit against OpenAI to go ahead in Ontario

An Ontario court has decided a copyright lawsuit filed by Canadian news publishers against OpenAI will proceed in that province.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, had put forward a jurisdictional challenge and argued the case should be heard in a U.S. courtroom instead.

OpenAI said the company isn’t located in Ontario and doesn’t do business in the province, and that the alleged conduct — the AI model training and crawling of web content — took place outside of Ontario.

But the decision by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice concludes the court does have jurisdiction to hear the case.

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A coalition of Canadian news outlets, which includes The Canadian Press, Torstar, The Globe and Mail, Postmedia and CBC/Radio-Canada, launched the lawsuit a year ago.

They argue that OpenAI is using their news content to train ChatGPT, breaching copyright and profiting from the use of that content without permission or compensation.