Encyclopedia Britannica and its subsidiary, Merriam-Webster, have filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit against OpenAI.
The complaint, filed in Manhattan federal court, joins a growing wave of litigation from content creators and publishers who allege that their intellectual property is being “cannibalized” to fuel the development of large language models (LLMs).
Britannica’s legal team asserts OpenAI utilized nearly 100,000 copyrighted articles and dictionary entries to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models without authorization.
Britannica is seeking an unspecified amount in monetary damages and a court-ordered injunction to prevent OpenAI from continuing the alleged infringements.
The lawsuit highlights two primary grievances:
Copyright infringement: Plaintiffs claim ChatGPT does more than just learn from their data but frequently provides “near-verbatim” reproductions of their content.
This allows the chatbot to act as a direct substitute for Britannica’s own platforms, thereby siphoning off web traffic and depriving the company of essential subscription and advertising revenue, according to the lawsuit.
Trademark violations: Beyond the theft of text, the suit claims OpenAI harms the Britannica brand through hallucinations. When ChatGPT generates false information and incorrectly attributes it to Encyclopedia Britannica, it damages the 250-year-old institution’s reputation for accuracy. Furthermore, by displaying Britannica’s content, the AI suggests an endorsement or partnership that does not exist.
OpenAI has remained steadfast in its defense. A spokesperson said the company’s models are “trained on publicly available data and grounded in fair use.”
The company maintains that its technology is transformative, designed to enhance human creativity and scientific discovery rather than replace original sources. This “fair use” argument is the central pillar of the AI industry’s defense against a litany of similar lawsuits, including the ongoing high-profile battle with The New York Times.
This is not Britannica’s first foray into AI-related litigation. The company filed a similar suit against the AI search startup Perplexity late last year. These cases represent a broader existential tension between traditional knowledge repositories and the rapid expansion of AI companies.
As the courts determine whether training AI on public data constitutes a transformative use or simple copyright theft, the outcome of this case could redefine how information is gathered, attributed, and monetized in the digital age.
