Merriam-Webster and Britannica have accused OpenAI of using their content without permission to train ChatGPT. The lawsuit claims AI summaries are diverting traffic and copying their material unlawfully.
Merriam-Webster, along with its parent company Encyclopedia Britannica, has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in a federal court in Manhattan, raising serious concerns about how artificial intelligence models are trained using online content. The case adds to the growing number of legal disputes between content creators and AI companies over copyright and data usage.
According to the complaint filed on Friday, the companies have alleged that OpenAI used their dictionary definitions, encyclopedia articles, and other online materials without permission to train its AI chatbot, ChatGPT. They claim that this use of content was unauthorized and has negatively impacted their business by reducing website traffic.
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Britannica and Merriam-Webster argue that ChatGPT provides users with AI-generated summaries that reduce the need for users to visit their original websites. This, they say, directly affects their revenue and undermines the value of their professionally created content. In the lawsuit, the companies stated,
“Defendants’ ChatGPT-based AI products free ride on Plaintiffs’ trusted, high-quality content — made possible through the diligent work of human researchers, writers, editors, and creators — by cannibalizing traffic to Defendants’ websites with AI-generated summaries of Plaintiffs’ own content.”
The complaint further claims that OpenAI copied a large amount of Britannica’s content, reportedly nearly 100,000 articles, to train its AI systems. The companies allege that ChatGPT sometimes produces responses that closely resemble or even directly copy their original material. Highlighting this concern, the complaint states that ChatGPT “generates outputs that copy or mimic, sometimes verbatim,” information from their encyclopedia entries, dictionary definitions and other articles.
Britannica has also argued that such use of its material is illegal and was done without any license or permission. The company emphasized that OpenAI’s actions are “unlicensed and without authorization.” It also pointed out that the full extent of the alleged copying is not yet clear and may only be known to OpenAI, stating that the “true extent” of how much has been stolen is “uniquely” within OpenAI’s knowledge.
In addition to copyright infringement, the lawsuit also includes claims related to trademark misuse. The companies allege that OpenAI’s chatbot sometimes gives the impression that it is authorised to use Britannica’s content. They also claim that ChatGPT has wrongly cited Britannica in some cases, especially in instances of AI-generated errors or “hallucinations,” which could harm their reputation.
As part of the legal action, Britannica and Merriam-Webster have asked the court to award monetary damages and to issue an order preventing OpenAI from continuing the alleged misuse of their content.
OpenAI, however, has denied the allegations. In response to the lawsuit, a spokesperson for the company said,
“Our models empower innovation, and are trained on publicly available data and grounded in fair use,”
defending its practices and asserting that its training methods comply with existing legal standards.
This lawsuit is part of a broader global trend where publishers, authors, and content creators are taking legal action against AI companies for using their work without permission. These cases raise important questions about copyright law, fair use, and the future of digital content in the age of artificial intelligence.
Notably, this is not the first such case in the AI space. Last year, a group of authors had filed a similar lawsuit against AI company Anthropic over copyright issues, which was eventually settled. The outcome of the present case could have a significant impact on how AI companies operate and how intellectual property laws are applied in the rapidly evolving technology sector.
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