In May 2020, Media and technology conglomerate Thomson Reuters sued a small legal AI startup called Ross Intelligence, alleging it violated U.S. copyright law by reproducing material from Westlaw, Thomson Reuters' legal research platform. As the pandemic raged, the lawsuit barely registered outside the small world of nerds obsessed with copyright rules. But it's now clear that the case — filed more than two years before the start of the generative AI boom — was the first strike in a much larger war between content publishers and artificial intelligence companies that is now unfolding in courts across the country . The outcome could make, break or reshape the information ecosystem and the entire AI industry – impacting virtually everyone on the internet.
Dozens of other copyright lawsuits have rapidly been filed against AI companies over the past two years. Plaintiffs include individual authors like Sarah Silverman and Ta Nehisi-Coates, visual artists, media companies like The New York Times and music industry giants like Universal Music Group. This wide variety of rights holders claim that AI companies have used their work to train often very lucrative and powerful AI models in a manner that amounts to theft. AI companies often defend themselves by relying on what is known as the “fair use” doctrine, arguing that building AI tools should be considered a situation where it is legal to use copyrighted material without permission or pay compensation to rights holders. (Commonly accepted examples of fair use include parody, news reporting, and academic research.) Nearly every major generative AI company is involved in this legal battle, including OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, Google, Anthropic, and Nvidia.
WIRED is keeping a close eye on how each of these lawsuits unfolds. We've created visualizations to help you track and contextualize which companies and rights holders are involved, where the cases are filed, what they claim, and everything else you need to know.
That first case Thomson Reuters vs. Ross Intelligenceis still working its way through the legal system. A trial originally scheduled for earlier this year has been postponed indefinitely, and while the costs of the lawsuit have already bankrupted Ross, it is unclear when it will end. Other cases, such as the closely watched lawsuit filed by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft, are currently in contentious discovery periods, with both sides debating what information to turn over.
