In May 2020, media and technology conglomerate Thomson Reuters sued a petite legal artificial intelligence startup called Ross Intelligence, accusing it of violating US copyright law by reproducing material from Westlaw, Thomson Reuters’ legal research platform. As the pandemic raged, the lawsuit barely registered outside the petite world of copyright-obsessed nerds. But it’s now clear that the case — filed more than two years before the generative AI boom took off — was the first strike in a much larger war between content publishers and AI companies currently playing out in courts across the country. The result could disrupt, rupture or transform the information ecosystem and the entire AI industry, thereby impacting almost all Internet users.
Dozens of other copyright lawsuits have been filed against artificial intelligence companies at a rapid pace over the past two years. Plaintiffs include individual authors such as Sarah Silverman and Ta Nehisi-Coates, visual artists, media companies such as The Up-to-date York Times, and music industry giants such as Universal Music Group. This wide range of rights holders claim that AI companies have used their work to train often highly lucrative and powerful AI models in a way that amounts to theft. Artificial intelligence companies often defend themselves by invoking the so-called “fair use” doctrine, arguing that the creation of artificial intelligence tools should be considered in a situation where it is legal to exploit copyrighted material without obtaining permission or paying compensation to the rights holders. (Commonly accepted examples of fair exploit include parody, news reporting, and academic research.) Nearly every major generative AI company has been drawn into this legal battle, including OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, Google, Anthropic, and Nvidia.
WIRED is following each of these lawsuits closely. We’ve created visualizations to aid you track and contextualize which companies and rights holders are involved, where cases have been filed, what the charges are, and everything else you need to know.
This first case Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligencestill working his way through the court system. The trial, originally scheduled for earlier this year, has been delayed indefinitely, and while the costs of litigation have already put Ross out of business, it is unclear when it will end. Other cases, such as the closely watched lawsuit filed by The Up-to-date York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft, are currently in the contentious phase, with the two sides arguing over what information they must hand over.