Every AI Copyright Lawsuit in the US, Visualized

May 2020, Media and technology group Thomson Reuters is suing a small legal artificial intelligence startup called Ross Intelligence, accusing the company of violating U.S. copyright law by copying materials from Thomson Reuters legal research platform Westlaw. As the pandemic rages on, the lawsuit has barely registered outside of the small world of nerds obsessed with copyright rules. But it is now clear that this case, filed more than two years before the generative AI craze began, was the first blow to the field. A bigger war Disputes between content publishers and artificial intelligence companies are currently playing out in courts across the country. The results could create, destroy or reshape information ecosystems and the entire artificial intelligence industry, impacting nearly everyone online.

Dozens of other copyright lawsuits have been filed against artificial intelligence companies in the past two years quickly. Plaintiffs include individual writers such as Sarah Silverman and Ta Nehisi-Coates, visual artists, media companies such as The New York Times, and music industry giant Such as Universal Music Group. Various rights holders claim that AI companies use the results of their work to train often lucrative and powerful AI models in a manner that is tantamount to theft. Artificial intelligence companies often rely on so-called ” “Fair use” principlebelieves that building artificial intelligence tools should be considered a situation where it is legal to use copyrighted material without the consent of the rights holder or the payment of compensation to the rights holder. (Widely accepted examples of fair use include parody, news reporting, and academic research.) Nearly every major generative AI company is involved in the legal battle, including OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, Google, Anthropic, and Nvidia.

WIRED is closely monitoring the progress of each lawsuit. We’ve created visualizations to help you track and understand which companies and rights holders are involved, where cases have been filed, their charges, and everything else you need to know.

The first case, Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence Corporationstill winding its way through the court system. A trial scheduled for earlier this year has been postponed indefinitely, and although the costs of the proceedings have bankrupted Ross, it’s unclear when it will end. Other cases, such as the high-profile lawsuit filed by the New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft, are currently pending controversial discovery periodduring which both sides argued over what information needed to be handed over.