Britannica and Merriam-Webster Take OpenAI to Court

Encyclopedia Britannica and its subsidiary Merriam-Webster are suing OpenAI. They claim the AI company used their reference materials without permission to train its models. The publishers argue this is not fair use, especially since Britannica/Merriam-Webster are paid resources with clear ownership.

The lawsuit covers millions of entries, definitions, and curated content from the publishers. The companies argue that OpenAI’s models were trained on this content without licensing or compensation.

OpenAI has built its language models using a huge mix of text from the internet. These two companies say their carefully curated material was included and that counts as copyright infringement.

So?

The case could affect how AI companies source training data in the future, especially from copyrighted or curated resources. It’s the kind of lawsuit that might shape licensing rules for AI. There's been an uptick in lawsuits like this.

For now, OpenAI continues running its models, and the companies are in court.