A collection of news and magazine publishers — including 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, Toronto Star Newspapers, and Vox Media, all members of News/Media Alliance — on Feb. 13 filed a copyright and trademark infringement case in the Southern District of New York against Cohere Inc., as reported in the Wall Street Journal.
Read more about the case and the full complaint here.
This suit alleges that Cohere, an AI company valued at over $5 billion, engaged in widespread unauthorized use of publisher content in developing and running its generative AI systems. Cohere’s behavior amounts to massive, systematic copyright infringement, as well as trademark infringement. The complaint provides a non-exhaustive list of thousands of articles that Cohere has infringed, through training, real-time use of content, and infringing outputs.
Plaintiffs seek a permanent injunction and damages for Cohere’s extensive and willful infringement.
“We are going to court to protect our rights. As generative AI becomes more prevalent, it is imperative that legal protections be enforced so that innovation can flourish responsibly. This not only protects investments in the creative process and developing intellectual property, but supports the quality of what users consume and the sustainability of the AI products themselves,” Danielle Coffey, President and CEO of the News/Media Alliance said in a news release announcing the lawsuit.
“As news, magazine, and media publishers, we serve an important role in keeping society informed and supporting the free flow of information and ideas,” Coffey added, “but we cannot continue to do so if AI companies like Cohere are able to undercut our businesses while using our own content to compete with us.”
Tony Hunter, Chair of the Board of the News/Media Alliance, added, “For far too long, technology platforms have exploited our industry’s content without permission or compensation. Today marks a historic moment as our members unite to take a stand against the unlawful use of our intellectual property. This is a crucial step in protecting the value of our journalism.”
“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,” said Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast.
More about the case:
- Cohere has used unlicensed copies of Publishers’ news and magazine articles in training 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 Cohere’s own product reveals includes real-time content extracted from publishers.
- Cohere copies publisher content at times from behind paywalls, and where the publisher has explicitly blocked Cohere’s bot from scraping.
- Cohere’s products spit out verbatim regurgitations and substitutional summaries of news content, even when the prompt does not mention a specific article or publication. The complaint provides an illustrative list of 4,000 specific examples of this occurring.
- Cohere shows its free-riding with a feature called “Under the Hood,” which reveals Cohere making full copies, without authorization, of the articles that power its outputs.
- When not copying publisher content, Cohere engages in damaging hallucinations. Cohere often delivers fake pieces under the Publishers’ names, confusing the public and damaging Publishers’ valuable brands by falsely associating Publishers with content that lacks the quality that readers expect 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. Read the full complaint here.
