Canadian news publishers sue AI firm Anthropic over copyright infringement

A coalition of Canada's largest news publishers is suing the artificial intelligence company Anthropic in an Ontario court, alleging it infringed their copyright by using their content to develop its AI model. Postmedia, Torstar, The Globe and Mail and The Canadian Press filed the lawsuit on Oct. 6, claiming Anthropic used their work without a valid licence to train its large language model, Claude. The statement of claim says Anthropic has been "substantially and unjustly enriched to the detriment of the News Media Companies." The allegations have not been proven in court, and Anthropic has not responded to a request for comment. The lawsuit was first reported by the news site Cartt.ca.

The publishers allege Anthropic deliberately "scrapes" enormous amounts of text data from the internet and their websites to obtain content for its models. "To obtain content for ingestion into its models and services, Anthropic deliberately 'scrapes' (i.e. accesses and copies) enormous amounts of text data from the internet and from the Plaintiffs' Websites," the claim says. They say the company then uses that content, without authorization or consent, to develop its AI models and also scrapes content on an ongoing basis in response to user prompts. The statement of claim accuses Anthropic of breaching the news media websites' terms of service and circumventing technological protection measures the publishers put in place to restrict copying. "Anthropic has capitalized on the commercial success of its AI models, building an expansive suite of services, and raised significant capital, all without obtaining a valid licence from any of the News Media Companies," the claim says. The news outlets say they are responsible for generating a significant portion of Canada's journalistic content and collectively have millions of readers.

"Notwithstanding concerns raised by several content creators across various industries, including through numerous other lawsuits and public criticism, Anthropic has done nothing to curtail its unlawful behaviour," the statement of claim says. The same group of companies, alongside CBC/Radio-Canada, launched a separate lawsuit against OpenAI in 2024. That case has yet to be settled. News publishers have been urging the federal government to take a stand on how AI systems use copyrighted content after the government's national AI strategy failed to address the issue. Publishers abroad have also taken legal action, with The New York Times suing OpenAI for its use of the paper's copyrighted material. The U.S. Justice Department sided with the tech company in that dispute last month. The claim states the news outlets "are responsible for generating a significant portion of Canada's journalistic content, from daily print broadsheets to round-the-clock digital news coverage." The lawsuit highlights ongoing tensions between technology companies and traditional media over intellectual property rights as AI models become more prevalent.

With files from The Canadian Press, The Globe and Mail and CBC News