Encyclopaedia Britannica Sues OpenAI as AI Training Data Copyright Dispute Escalates

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(Source: Cailian Press)

Cailian Press, March 16 — (Editor: Niu Zhanlin) The Encyclopedia Britannica and its subsidiary, Merriam-Webster Dictionary, have filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Federal Court in Manhattan against AI company OpenAI, accusing the latter of unauthorized use of their authoritative reference content to train AI models, causing substantial harm to the publishers.

In the lawsuit filed last Friday, Britannica stated that supported by Microsoft, OpenAI used its online articles, encyclopedia content, and dictionary entries to train its flagship chatbot, ChatGPT, enabling it to answer user questions and generate content summaries that “cannibalize” traffic originally directed to Britannica’s website.

The lawsuit describes ChatGPT as “free-riding” on Britannica’s trusted, high-quality content, transferring the value of the content to OpenAI without any compensation.

An OpenAI spokesperson responded to the lawsuit on Monday, saying: “Our AI models are designed to promote innovation, trained on publicly available data, and comply with the ‘fair use’ doctrine.”

This case is the latest in a series of high-stakes copyright lawsuits in recent years. Previously, copyright holders including writers and news organizations have sued multiple tech companies, accusing them of using copyrighted content without permission to train AI systems.

Britannica stated that last year it also filed a similar lawsuit against AI startup Perplexity AI, which is still pending.

AI companies argue that their systems’ transformative use of copyrighted content complies with the legal framework of “fair use.”

Britannica claims that during the training of GPT large models, OpenAI illegally copied nearly 100,000 encyclopedia articles. The lawsuit also states that responses generated by ChatGPT sometimes “almost verbatim” replicate encyclopedia entries, dictionary definitions, and other content, diverting users who would otherwise visit Britannica’s website.

Britannica further accuses OpenAI of trademark infringement, alleging that ChatGPT in some cases implied it had authorization to copy Britannica’s content and falsely cited Britannica as a source during so-called AI “hallucinations.”

Therefore, Britannica considers OpenAI’s copying not only a legal violation but also a threat to its survival: if the economic benefits of the content flow to AI platforms instead of the creators, its business model cannot sustain itself.

Britannica requests the court to order OpenAI to pay unspecified damages and to issue an injunction to prevent further infringement.

Alongside the publishers’ lawsuit, more media organizations are signing content licensing agreements with AI companies. For example, News Corp reached an agreement with Meta in March 2026, with a maximum annual value of $50 million; UK publisher Reach also signed a pay-per-use agreement with Amazon for its Nova AI model in the same month.