Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam Webster have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming the company used their copyrighted material to train ChatGPT without permission.
Quick Summary – TLDR:
- Britannica and Merriam Webster filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in Manhattan federal court over alleged copyright infringement.
- The publishers claim nearly 100000 articles and dictionary entries were copied to train AI models such as GPT 4.
- They argue ChatGPT can generate near verbatim text from their content and reduce traffic to their websites.
- The case joins a growing wave of copyright lawsuits against AI companies from publishers and writers.
What Happened?
Encyclopedia Britannica and its dictionary subsidiary Merriam Webster have filed a lawsuit accusing OpenAI of using their copyrighted content to train its artificial intelligence models without permission. The complaint was filed in Manhattan federal court and claims the company copied large portions of Britannica’s reference materials while developing ChatGPT.
The publishers say OpenAI used thousands of encyclopedia articles and dictionary definitions to build its AI systems and that the chatbot can now generate responses that closely resemble their original content.
Encyclopaedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster file lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging scraping of nearly 100,000 articles for LLM training and verbatim outputs, seeking damages for copyright infringement.
— Kol Tregaskes (@koltregaskes) March 16, 2026
Filed in US federal court, the suit also claims trademark dilution via… https://t.co/lB3mmW2Ipv pic.twitter.com/niWv7HW8GR
Britannica Says AI Copied Its Content
According to the complaint, OpenAI allegedly copied nearly 100000 articles from Britannica’s online encyclopedia and related resources. The lawsuit claims that GPT 4 has effectively memorized parts of Britannica’s copyrighted material and can reproduce passages that closely match the original text.
Britannica says the AI model can output near verbatim copies of encyclopedia entries, dictionary definitions, and other reference content when prompted by users. In the lawsuit, the publisher included examples showing ChatGPT responses placed side by side with Britannica text where sections appear to match word for word.
The company argues these examples show the AI system was trained directly on its content without authorization.
Concerns Over Lost Traffic and Revenue
Britannica also claims that AI-generated answers are diverting readers away from publisher websites. Instead of directing users to Britannica pages, ChatGPT often provides summaries or explanations that substitute for visiting the original source.
The lawsuit states that this behavior cannibalizes web traffic that publishers depend on. Britannica argues that the chatbot’s responses compete directly with its content and could reduce advertising revenue and subscriptions.
The company also claims that incorrect responses or AI hallucinations attributed to Britannica could damage its reputation for accuracy and reliability.
Trademark and Copyright Claims
In addition to copyright infringement, the lawsuit accuses OpenAI of violating trademark law under the Lanham Act. Britannica says the AI sometimes falsely attributes incorrect information to the publisher.
The complaint argues this could mislead users into believing Britannica endorsed or produced the information.
Britannica is seeking financial damages and a court order that would block OpenAI from continuing the alleged use of its material.
OpenAI Responds to the Allegations
OpenAI responded to the lawsuit by defending how its AI models are trained.
An OpenAI spokesperson said:
Technology companies developing AI systems have repeatedly argued that training models on publicly available information is legal under the fair use doctrine, because the systems transform existing data into new outputs.
Part of a Growing Legal Battle Over AI
The case is the latest example of publishers and creators challenging AI companies over training data.
Several organizations have already taken legal action against OpenAI, including The New York Times and media company Ziff Davis, which owns technology websites such as Mashable, CNET, IGN, and PCMag.
More than a dozen newspapers across the United States and Canada have also filed lawsuits involving similar copyright claims.
Britannica is also pursuing a separate lawsuit against AI startup Perplexity, which is still ongoing.
In another related case, AI company Anthropic settled a class action lawsuit over the use of copyrighted books used for training its models. The settlement resulted in a payout of about 1.5 billion dollars to authors.
SQ Magazine’s Takeaway
I think this lawsuit highlights one of the biggest unresolved questions in the AI industry right now. Companies building powerful AI systems need huge amounts of information to train their models, but much of that information belongs to publishers and creators. If courts decide that using copyrighted material for training is not allowed, it could completely reshape how AI models are developed. This case could become a major turning point for the future of AI and online publishing.
