tech

March 17, 2026

Encyclopædia Britannica Sues OpenAI for Theft

Encyclopædia Britannica and its subsidiary Merriam-Webster have filed a lawsuit in a US court against OpenAI, alleging that it misuses their materials for the "training" of artificial intelligence models.

Encyclopædia Britannica Sues OpenAI for Theft

TL;DR

  • Encyclopædia Britannica and Merriam-Webster have sued OpenAI in a US court.
  • The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI is misusing their materials for training AI models like ChatGPT.
  • Britannica claims nearly 100,000 articles were illegally copied, with ChatGPT producing "near-verbatim" copies.
  • The plaintiffs state that OpenAI's AI "cannibalizes" their internet traffic and "steals" users.
  • OpenAI is also accused of intellectual property theft and misrepresenting Britannica's content in AI 'hallucinations'.
  • Britannica is seeking monetary damages and a court injunction to stop the alleged illegal practice.
  • OpenAI maintains its models are trained on publicly available data and adhere to fair use principles.
  • This lawsuit follows a trend of copyright holders suing tech companies over AI training data.

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