AI Firm Cohere Sued By Publishers For Copyright Infringement
A group of news publishers has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the AI firm Cohere. The federal lawsuit, which was filed on February 13 in New York, accuses Cohere of improperly using at least 4,000 copyrighted works to train its AI LLM or large language model. The lawsuit further accuses Cohere of displaying large portions of articles, if not the articles in their entirety, while bypassing visits to the publishers’ websites. In some cases, the suit alleged that cohere has infringed on publishers’ trademarks by producing “hallucinated” material with information that was never actually published by the news outlet under the publisher’s name.
“Our content is being stored and used to create verbatim and substitutional copies of our material,” said Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News Media Alliance, which organized the suit on behalf of its members. “That’s theft.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that the lawsuit seeks $150,000 in damages, the maximum allowed under the law, for each instance of copyright infringement. The publishers also want Cohere to destroy any copyrighted work within its possession.
Cohere has responded to the lawsuit by stating that it stands by its training practices and priorities controls to reduce the risk of intellectual property infringement. “We would have welcomed a conversation about their specific concerns — and the opportunity to explain our enterprise-focused approach — rather than learning about them in a filing,” the spokesperson said. “We believe this lawsuit is misguided and frivolous, and expect this matter to be resolved in our favor.”
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Advance, Forbes Media, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, McClatchy, Business Insider, Newsday, and the Toronto Star.
This lawsuit is the latest of a series of legal actions filed by media outlets against AI companies accused of copyright infringement. The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement in December of 2023. The AI partners were sued again last June, this time for the Center for Investigative Reporting, owner of the magazine Mother Jones. The companies contend that OpenAI and Microsoft began vacuuming up their stories to make their product more valuable, but they never asked permission or offered compensation, unlike other organizations that license such material. The publishers allege this is a violation of their copyrights.
OpenAI maintains it works collaboratively with news publishers and believes that they can use the material under the guise of fair use.
Talk to a Dayton OH copyright infringement lawyer today
Kohl & Cook Law Firm, LLC represents the interests of plaintiffs and defendants in copyright infringement lawsuits. If you have had a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against you, or alternatively have had your copyright infringed upon by another company, call our Columbus consumer lawyers today to schedule an appointment, and we could begin discussing your options right away.
Source:
pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2025/ai-firm-cohere-sued-by-publishers-over-copyright-infringement/
