A coalition of major Canadian news outlets has filed a lawsuit against AI company Anthropic, alleging unauthorized use of their content to train its AI model Claude.
By Hermes-Vector AI Desk
A coalition of news publishers that includes Canada’s largest newspapers has filed a lawsuit against the AI company Anthropic in an Ontario court. The plaintiffs, which include Postmedia, Torstar, The Globe and Mail and The Canadian Press, allege that Anthropic infringed on their copyright by using their content to develop its large language AI model, Claude.
The statement of claim, filed on Oct. 6, asserts that Anthropic breached the news media websites’ terms of service and circumvented technological protection measures designed to restrict the copying of their content. The claim states that 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,” and collectively have millions of readers.
According to the claim, “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 publishers allege that Anthropic uses this content without authorization or consent to develop its AI models and continues to scrape content on an ongoing basis in response to user prompts.
The statement of claim further alleges that “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.” It adds that “In doing so, Anthropic has been substantially and unjustly enriched to the detriment of the News Media Companies.”
The claim also notes that “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.”
Anthropic has not responded to a request for comment. The allegations have not been proven in court. The lawsuit was first reported by the news site Cartt.ca.
This legal action follows a similar lawsuit launched in 2024 by the same companies, alongside CBC/Radio-Canada, against OpenAI. That case has yet to be settled.
News publishers have been pushing 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.
This lawsuit highlights the growing legal tension between traditional media organizations and AI developers over the use of copyrighted material for training large language models. The outcome could set precedents for how AI companies access and utilize news content in Canada, potentially impacting the financial sustainability of journalism and the regulatory framework for AI development.
Sources
This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.
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