Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster Sue OpenAI
Two old-fashioned reference works collide with a very modern technological product. Encyclopedia Britannica and its subsidiary Merriam-Webster sued OpenAIalleging that the tech company used Britannica content to train AI models without authorization. The lawsuit says OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, copied Britannica’s copyrighted content to train its large language models.
“ChatGPT then provides narrative responses to user queries that often contain verbatim or near-textual reproductions, summaries, or abridgements of the original content, including [Britannica’s] copyrighted works,” the lawsuit claims.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, filed a lawsuit in 2025 against OpenAI, alleging that it violated Ziff Davis’ copyrights in the training and operation of its AI systems.)
The lawsuit says ChatGPT-based product summaries of Encyclopedia Britannica content cannibalize traffic and that OpenAI reproduces “web publishers’ copyrighted content without permission or compensation.”
Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster lawsuit continues orient yourself content owners sue AI companies for copyright infringement.
Anthropic and Meta won cases last year under the fair use exception that allows them to use copyrighted content without the creators’ permission. Britannica also filed a lawsuit against Perplexity last year, which is still pending.
Regarding the new lawsuit, an OpenAI spokesperson told CNET via email: “Our models drive innovation, are trained on publicly available data, and are based on fair use.”
Encyclopedia Britannica did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
