The dictionary sues OpenAI

Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging in its complaint that the AI giant has committed “massive copyright infringement.” Britannica, which owns Merriam-Webster, retains the copyright to nearly 100,000 online articles, which have been scraped and used to train OpenAI’s LLMs without permission, the publisher alleges in the lawsuit. Britannica also accuses OpenAI of violating copyright laws when it generates outputs that contain “full or partial verbatim reproductions” of its content and when the AI lab uses its articles in ChatGPT’s RAG (retrieval augmented generation) workflow. OpenAI’s RAG tool is how the LLM scans the web or other databases for newly updated information when responding to a query. Britannica also alleges that OpenAI violates the Lanham Act, a trademark statute, when it generates made-up hallucinations and attributes them falsely to the publisher. “ChatGPT starves web publishers like [Britannica] of revenue by generating responses to users’ queries that substitute, and directly compete with, the content from publishers like [Britannica],” the lawsuit reads. Britannica also alleges ChatGPT’s hallucinations jeopardize “the public’s continued access to high-quality and trustworthy online information.” Britannica joins a number of other publishers and writers in pursuing legal action against OpenAI over copyright issues.

The New York Times, Ziff Davis (owner of Mashable, CNET, IGN, PC Mag, and others), and more than a dozen newspapers across the U.S. and Canada, including the Chicago Tribune, the Denver Post, the Sun Sentinel, the Toronto Star, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, have sued OpenAI. A similar Britannica lawsuit against Perplexity is still pending. There is not a strong legal precedent that establishes whether using copyrighted content to train an LLM is copyright infringement. But in one particular instance, Anthropic successfully convinced federal judge William Alsup that this use case — using the content as training data — is transformative enough to be legal. However, Alsup argued that Anthropic violated the law by illegally downloading millions of books, rather than paying for them, which warranted a $1.5 billion class action settlement for impacted writers. Techcrunch event Disrupt 2026: The tech ecosystem, all in one room Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register now to save up to $400. Save up to $300 or 30% to TechCrunch Founder Summit 1,000+ founders and investors come together at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 for a full day focused on growth, execution, and real-world scaling. Learn from founders and investors who have shaped the industry. Connect with peers navigating similar growth stages. Walk away with tactics you can apply immediatelyOffer ends March 13. San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026 REGISTER NOW OpenAI did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment before publication. Topics AI, encyclopedia britannica, lawsuit, Merriam-Webster, OpenAI Amanda Silberling Senior Writer Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos. You can contact or verify outreach from Amanda by emailing amanda@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at @amanda.100 on Signal.

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