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Blake Brittain
Mon, March 16, 2026 astatine 9:13 AM CDT 1 min read
By Blake Brittain
March 16 (Reuters) - Encyclopedia Britannica and its Merriam-Webster subsidiary person sued OpenAI (OPAI.PVT)in Manhattan national tribunal for allegedly misusing their notation materials to bid its artificial quality models.
Britannica said successful the ailment filed connected Friday that Microsoft (MSFT)-backed OpenAI utilized its online articles and encyclopedia and dictionary entries to thatch its flagship chatbot ChatGPT to respond to quality prompts and "cannibalized" Britannica's web postulation with AI-generated summaries of its content.
Spokespeople for the companies did not instantly respond to requests for remark connected the ailment connected Monday.
The lawsuit is 1 of galore high-stakes lawsuits filed by copyright owners including authors and quality outlets against tech companies for utilizing their worldly to bid AI systems without permission. Britannica filed a related lawsuit against artificial quality startup Perplexity AI past twelvemonth that is inactive ongoing.
AI companies person argued that their systems marque just usage of copyrighted contented by transforming it into thing new.
Britannica's suit said that OpenAI unlawfully copied astir 100,000 of its articles to bid GPT ample connection models. The ailment said that ChatGPT produces "near-verbatim" copies of Britannica's encyclopedia entries, dictionary definitions and different content, diverting users who would otherwise sojourn its websites.
Britannica besides accused OpenAI of infringing its trademarks by implying that it has support to reproduce its worldly and wrongfully citing Britannica successful false AI "hallucinations."
Britannica requested an unspecified magnitude of monetary damages and a tribunal order blocking the alleged infringement.
(Reporting by Blake Brittain successful Washington; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
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