Multiple media companies and content producers have filed lawsuits against Generative AI (artificial intelligence) software companies such as OpenAI (maker of ChatGPT), Microsoft, Anthropic, Midjourney, Stability AI, Perplexity AI, and DeviantArt, and chip giants Nvidia and Intel.
Many of the lawsuits involve alleged copyright infringement. The complaints generally claim that AI companies illegally train various large language models (LLMs) on copyrighted content from media companies.
In response, Generative AI companies typically say the lawsuits are without merit because their business strategies leverage "fair use" to train their AI models.
Meanwhile, some media companies are licensing their content to Generative AI companies -- though financial terms of such deals typically remain confidential.
The stakes are extremely high for all Internet content producers, generative AI companies and their investors. Previous technology waves -- from search engines to streaming services -- disrupted traditional paid media content models. Generative AI, some critics allege, could further pressure content providers, claiming that AI is illegally gathering and leveraging trademarked information. As a result, Generative AI threatens the sustainability of content producers worldwide, some critics claim.
The timeline below, updated regularly, tracks Generative AI lawsuits, legal cases, judgments, settlements, licensing agreements, and business outcomes. Check back regularly for updates.
AI Lawsuits: December 2024 Updates
December 21 - Music Industry vs. Anthropic: A federal judge is reportedly poised to dismiss the majority of a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by music publishers against Anthropic, MSP reported.
December 20 - News Corp vs. Perplexity AI: News Corp renewed its intellectual property complaint against Perplexity AI, alleging copyright infringement, false designation of origin, and trademark dilution, the National Law Review reported.
December 13 - OpenAI Responds to Elon Musk: OpenAI has publicly responded to Elon Musk's lawsuit against the company, alleging that Musk wanted OpenAI to be a for-profit company -- which runs counter to Musk's lawsuit against the ChatGPI software maker.
December 2 - Elon Musk vs. OpenAI: Elon Musk is asking a federal court to stop OpenAI from converting into a fully, for-profit business, CNBC reported.
AI Lawsuits: November 2024 Updates
November 29 - Canadian Media Lawsuit vs. OpenAI: Multiple Canadian media companies have filed suit against OpenAI, alleging that "OpenAI regularly breaches copyright and online terms of use by scraping large swaths of content from Canadian media to help develop its products, such as ChatGPT. OpenAI is capitalizing and profiting from the use of this content, without getting permission or compensating content owners." The plaintiffs include Torstar, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press and CBC/Radio-Canada.
November 29 - Lawsuit Milestone: The Intercept’s victory over OpenAI's bid to quickly dismiss the publication’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act lawsuit marks the first such case to clear initial court hurdles, setting the stage for similar claims against AI companies, Bloomberg Law asserted.
November 29 - Potential Class Action Lawsuit: A Manchester law firm has started on-boarding clients for a probable class action lawsuit against Microsoft and Google, ComputerWeekly reported. Barings Law believes the cloud services giants are "unlawfully collecting and using peoples’ personal data to train their artificial intelligence (AI) models," the report said.
November 25 - Lawsuit vs. OpenAI: A federal court rejected OpenAI’s effort to toss a lawsuit filed by The Intercept over using its journalists’ work to train ChatGPT without permission or credit, the Intercept reported.
November 22 - New York Times Lawsuit Update vs. OpenAI: The New York Times says it spent 150 hours sifting through OpenAI’s training data looking for potential evidence—only for OpenAI to delete all of its work, The Times alleges, according to a Wired report.
November 19 - Lawsuit vs OpenAI: The news agency ANI has sued OpenAI for using its “original news content” in an unauthorized manner, possibly becoming the first Indian publisher to drag an AI company to court for violating its intellectual property rights, the Hindustan Times reported.
November 15 - Lawsuit Expanded: Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI has expanded to include new defendants such as Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and former OpenAI board member and Microsoft VP Dee Templeton, TechCrunch reported.
November 14 - Lawsuit vs OpenAI: GEMA, a German licensing body, has filed suit against OpenAI, alleging that OpenAI "systematically uses GEMA’s repertoire to train its systems," Music Business World reported.
November 8 -Lawsuit Dismissed: The Southern District of New York dismissed a lawsuit against OpenAI filed by two news media outlets, Silicon Republic reported. The suit, filed by Raw Story Media and AlterNet Media in early 2024, alleged OpenAI violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by scraping copyrighted journalistic work to train its AI models, the report said.
November 7 - Canadian Lawsuit: The Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) has filed a lawsuit against Caseway AI, claiming the AI chatbot infringed on its copyrighted work, CBC reported.
November 6 - Google's Response: Google objected to new claims that involve consolidating AI copyright suits, Bloomberg Law reported.
November 5- New York Times vs. OpenAI: The New York times asked a federal judge to order OpenAI to identify and admit all the newspapers' articles the tech company used to train its AI models, Bloomberg Law reported.
Generative AI Lawsuits: October 2024 Updates
October 24 - Lawsuit vs Character.AI: A mother has sued Character.AI, claiming the chatbot platform played a role in her son's suicide. Meanwhile, Character.AI said it would roll out a number of new safety features, including “improved detection, response, and intervention” related to chats that violate its terms of service and a notification when a user has spent an hour in a chat, TechCrunch reported.
October 23 - Partnership Investigation: Google's partnership with Anthropic is being formally probed by the U.K.'s antitrust regulator, SeekingAlpha reported.
October 21 - Lawsuit vs Perplexity: The Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones and the New York Post are suing generative AI search engine Perplexity for copyright infringement, The Journal reported. Perplexity AI is seeking funding at an $8 billion valuation. Early investors include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
October 10 - Content Licensing: OpenAI has signed a content licensing agreement with Hearst, the major media company. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
October 9 - Elon Musk vs. OpenAI Case: OpenAI accused Elon Musk of harassment in a legal fight that’s unfolding as the startup weighs a plan to shift to a for-profit business model, The LA Times reported.
October 3 - Potential Lawsuit Against Meta: Novelist Christopher Farnsworth has filed a proposed class-action copyright lawsuit against Meta, Reuters reported. The lawsuit accuses Facebook's parent of misusing his books to train its Llama artificial-intelligence large language model, the report said.
October 1 - Legal Update: OpenAI and Microsoft's GitHub will head to the country’s largest federal appeals court to resolve their first copyright lawsuit from open-source programmers, Bloomberg reported. The programmers claim Microsoft Copilot violates a decades-old digital copyright.
More: Continue to next page for additional AI-related lawsuits.
It is important to understand that while AI technology brings many benefits, there are also legal issues that need to be resolved, especially in relation to copyright. Hopefully, all parties can find a fair and balanced solution so that innovation can continue to thrive without compromising the rights of content creators. Thank you for the very informative information!