{"id":16330,"date":"2025-02-13T15:13:26","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T20:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsmediaalliance.org\/?p=15656"},"modified":"2025-05-07T10:53:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T14:53:12","slug":"news-media-alliance-announces-industry-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsmediaalliance.org\/news-media-alliance-announces-industry-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"News\/Media Alliance Announces Industry Lawsuit Against AI Content Theft"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, February 13, a collection of news and magazine publishers, including\u00a0Advance Local Media, Cond<\/b>\u00e9<\/b>\u00a0Nast, 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,\u00a0<\/b>and\u00a0Vox Media<\/b>, all members of News\/Media Alliance, the leading industry trade association, filed a copyright and trademark infringement case in the Southern District of New York against\u00a0Cohere Inc<\/b>.,\u00a0as reported in the Wall Street Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Click here to download the full complaint.<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019s extensive and willful infringement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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,\u201d\u00a0Danielle Coffey, President and CEO of the News\/Media Alliance<\/b>\u00a0stated. \u201cAs news, magazine, and media publishers, we serve an important role in keeping society informed and supporting the free flow of information and ideas, 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.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

Tony Hunter, Chair of the Board of the News\/Media Alliance<\/b>, added, \u201cFor far too long, technology platforms have exploited our industry\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d said\u00a0Roger Lynch, CEO of Cond\u00e9 Nast<\/b>.<\/p>\n

\u201cCopyright protections form the backbone of our news media ecosystem and the creative businesses we turn to for trustworthy information and entertainment; they cannot be disregarded without consequence. This is a case about the blatant theft of our original work to create a competing commercial product. While we welcome responsible technological innovation, with this litigation we\u2019re putting AI companies on notice that they are not above the law and we will enforce our intellectual property rights,\u201d stated\u00a0Pam Wasserstein, President and Vice Chair of Vox Media<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Anna Bateson, CEO of Guardian Media Group<\/b>, said, \u201cAs part of a considered approach to generative AI, the Guardian has explored and signed agreements with numerous partners to ensure fair compensation and attribution for the Guardian\u2019s award-winning investigative journalism. Unfortunately, Cohere has demonstrated an egregious pattern of scraping and copying news articles to produce full verbatim copies of original content without compensation\u2013or even worse, complete hallucinations. The Guardian is proud to stand with some of the world\u2019s top publishers in an attempt to stop Cohere\u2019s brazen theft and distortion of original journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

More about the case:<\/p>\n