A coalition of prominent U.S. media companies, alongside the owner of the Toronto Star, has taken legal action against Cohere, a Toronto-based artificial intelligence firm, alleging copyright infringement. The lawsuit was lodged in a New York court on Thursday. The plaintiffs, including heavyweights such as Condé Nast, McClatchy, Forbes Media, and Guardian News, accuse Cohere of unlawfully scraping their online articles without seeking permission or offering compensation.
The litigation claims Cohere exploited these articles to develop its large language models, which allegedly "mimic, undercut, and compete" with the publishers' legitimate offerings. The media companies are demanding a court order to prevent Cohere from using their copyrighted content in AI training and fine-tuning processes. Additionally, they seek damages amounting to $150,000 for each article purportedly infringed upon.
The lawsuit casts a critical spotlight on Cohere, known as one of Canada's most promising AI startups. Founded in 2019 by Aidan Gomez and Ivan Zhang, Cohere quickly gained traction with backing from prominent figures in the AI sector, including Geoffrey Hinton and Fei-Fei Li. Nick Frosst, another co-founder and former Google employee, joined the company a year post its inception. Cohere has secured investments from Nvidia, Export Development Canada, and tech giants like Salesforce, Cisco, and Oracle.
"Not content with just stealing our works, Cohere also blatantly manufactures fake pieces and attributes them to us, misleading the public and tarnishing our brands," stated the media companies in their filing.
The lawsuit is not an isolated incident in the AI landscape. OpenAI encountered similar copyright allegations last November. However, Cohere maintains confidence in its legal standing. Josh Gartner, a spokesperson for the company, expressed optimism about the court siding with them due to their proactive efforts to mitigate intellectual property risks.
"We would have welcomed a conversation about their specific concerns — and the opportunity to explain our enterprise-focused approach — rather than learning about them in a filing," noted Gartner.
The media companies argue that while they appreciate innovative applications of AI when ethically deployed — many already license content to AI firms — Cohere's actions constitute improper appropriation of their creative labor for profit.
"Publishers value innovation and the promise that artificial intelligence holds if ethically deployed. In fact, many publishers already license their articles to AI companies," emphasized the media companies.
Cohere's current valuation stands at $5 billion according to the lawsuit. Despite this legal challenge, Gartner remains unfazed by the allegations.
“We believe this lawsuit is misguided and frivolous and expect this matter to be resolved in our favour,” he asserted confidently.
