Publishers including Condé Nast, The Atlantic, and Forbes have filed a lawsuit against the generative AI startup Cohere. They accuse Cohere of using at least 4,000 copyrighted works to train its AI models without permission. The publishers say Cohere displayed large portions of articles and even entire articles for its users.
They claim this harms their referral traffic. The suit also alleges that Cohere infringed on publishers’ trademarks by generating content that wasn’t actually published by the outlets. Josh Gartner, head of communications at Cohere, responded to the lawsuit.
He stated that the company “strongly stands by its practices for responsibly training its enterprise AI.” Gartner believes the lawsuit is “misguided and frivolous.”
“We have long prioritized controls that mitigate the risk of IP infringement and respect the rights of holders,” Gartner said. “We would have welcomed a conversation about their specific concerns rather than learning about them in a filing. We expect this matter to be resolved in our favor.”
This lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal battles targeting AI companies for alleged intellectual property violations.
Some companies, including OpenAI, have opted to license content to avoid future legal challenges. However, they maintain that their use of copyrighted material falls under fair use. The outcome of this legal challenge could have major implications for the broader AI industry.
Publishers sue Cohere over copyright
It may affect how AI companies train their models and use existing content going forward. A collection of news and magazine publishers filed the copyright and trademark infringement case in the Southern District of New York on February 13.
The plaintiffs include Advance Local Media, Condé Nast, The Atlantic, Forbes Media, The Guardian, Business Insider, LA Times, McClatchy Media Company, Newsday, Plain Dealer Publishing Company, POLITICO, The Republican Company, and Toronto Star Newspapers. The suit alleges that Cohere, an AI company valued at over $5 billion, engaged in widespread unauthorized use of publisher content. This was allegedly done in developing and running its generative AI systems.
The complaint includes a list of thousands of articles allegedly infringed by Cohere through training, real-time use of content, and infringing outputs. Plaintiffs seek a permanent injunction and damages for what they describe as extensive and willful infringement. “We are going to court to protect our rights,” stated Danielle Coffey, President and CEO of the News/Media Alliance.
“As generative AI becomes more prevalent, it is imperative that legal protections be enforced so that innovation can flourish responsibly.”
Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast, commented, “The New Yorker, Vogue, GQ, Wired, Vanity Fair, and our many other iconic brands cannot live up to their exceptional standards if we allow their content to be stolen, distorted, and trafficked. We will defend our rights fiercely and wherever they are infringed.”
The lawsuit alleges that Cohere used unlicensed copies of publishers’ news and magazine articles both in training its systems and through real-time copying to directly compete with publishers. Cohere claims its chatbot’s “key differentiator” is the ability to provide “verified answers,” which, according to the complaint, includes real-time content extracted from publishers.
Plaintiffs are represented by Scott Zebrak, Jenny Pariser, and Meredith Stewart of Oppenheim and Zebrak, LLP, facilitated by Regan Smith of News/Media Alliance.
