Several Canadian media companies have filed a legal action against Microsoft (MSFT) backed OpenAI, accusing the artificial intelligence (AI) start-up of breaching copyright law and online terms of use.
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This is the latest in a number of lawsuits brought against OpenAI by media, as well as authors, visual artists, music publishers, and other copyright owners over data that’s used to train generative AI systems without the owners permission. In the U.S., several media companies have filed lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft, including The New York Times Co. (NYT).
In a statement, Canadian media companies Torstar, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, and CBC said OpenAI is scraping large amounts of content to develop its products without getting permission or compensating the content owners. Microsoft is OpenAI’s largest financial backer having invested $13 billion in the company.
In the Public Domain?
In their statement of claim, the Canadian companies demand damages from OpenAI and a permanent injunction preventing it from using their material without consent. “Rather than seek to obtain the information legally, OpenAI has elected to brazenly misappropriate the News Media Companies’ valuable intellectual property and convert it for its own uses,” reads the lawsuit.
In response, OpenAI said its AI models are trained on publicly available data that’s grounded in fair use and international copyright principles. The Canadian news companies’ do not mention Microsoft in their legal action.
Earlier in November, Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk expanded a lawsuit against OpenAI to include Microsoft, alleging the two companies are illegally trying to monopolize the market for generative AI.
Is MSFT Stock a Buy?
As OpenAI is not publicly traded, we look instead at Microsoft, its biggest backer. The stock of Microsoft has a consensus Strong Buy rating among 29 Wall Street analysts. That rating is based on 26 Buy and three Hold ratings assigned in the last three months. The average MSFT price target of $496.92 implies 17.42% upside from current levels.
