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Condé Nast, McClatchy and a coalition of prominent media publishers filed a lawsuit against Canadian AI startup Cohere on Feb. 13, accusing the company of widespread copyright and trademark infringement. The legal action, initiated in the Southern District of New York, addresses the use of publishers’ content in AI systems without authorization.
The plaintiffs, including The Atlantic, Forbes Media, The Guardian, Insider Inc. (Business Insider), Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Politico and Vox Media, allege that Cohere, a Canadian AI company valued at over $5 billion, has engaged in unauthorized use of their content to develop and operate its generative AI systems.
Allegations Of Widespread Infringement
According to the lawsuit, Cohere improperly used at least 4,000 copyrighted works to train its large language models (LLMs). The publishers claim that Cohere’s technology copies and displays entire articles without permission and bypasses paywalls, potentially undermining the publishers’ business models that rely on advertising and subscription revenue.
Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of the News Media Alliance, which organized the lawsuit on behalf of its members, said, “Our content is being stored and used to create verbatim and substitutional copies of our material. That’s theft.” The alliance aims to establish legal precedent for the licensed use of journalism in AI applications, including both training and real-time uses.
Specific Instances Of Alleged Infringement
The lawsuit highlights specific instances of alleged infringement. For example, when asked about financial strains on Miami-Dade County’s public transit system, Cohere’s AI reportedly reproduced a complete Miami Herald article from September 2024, with only minor changes to