Online influential parenting platform, Mumsnet, has launched a legal complaint against OpenAI, the developer of chatbot ChatGPT, accusing the AI company of scraping billions of words and content from the site without consent.
While many organisations have raised concerns about tech companies creating, developing and training AI tools using datasets which contain copyright protected material, this is the first legal action of its kind against OpenAI in the UK.
Mumsnet consists of over six billion words shared by community members. The website and its contents are subject to copyright and the site’s terms of use, which explicitly prohibits reproduction of all or a substantial part, copying, distribution and scraping without consent.
The legal action brought by Mumsnet alleges copyright infringement, breach of terms of use, and database right infringement, and demands that Open AI delete all Mumsnet data it holds and cease any further use of it.
Justine Roberts, Founder and CEO of the platform, said the legal action followed attempts from Mumsnet to offer a licence to OpenAI, an offer that was rejected by the AI company.
Roberts highlighted that there were “very good reasons” why AI should train its large language models (LLMs) on Mumsnet’s conversational data, which predominantly comes from female community members, particularly the value of its data in addressing any gender biases displayed in AI models – one of the twelve challenges of AI governance identified in a recent House of Commons Committee report.
However, discussions of a potential licensing agreement were reportedly unsuccessful due to OpenAI expressing a preference for datasets that were not easily accessible online.
The legal action brought by Mumsnet marks a significant development in the ever evolving relationship between AI and copyright in the UK – a topic we have previously discussed in the context of works created by ChatGPT: “ChatGPT – can the AI generated content output be protected by copyright in the UK?”
It will be interesting to see how this legal action unfolds, and our intellectual property specialists will certainly be keeping a keen eye on future developments in this case. In particular, it will be interesting to see how OpenAI attempts to defend itself and how it justifies its apparent position that it does not require a licence from Mumsnet to scrape data.
Defendants in copyright litigation and database right infringement cases typically adopt one or more of the following defences:
Our London based solicitors have the expertise to deal with the legal issues that surround copyright and database right, with a particular focus on dealing with these issues in the tech sector. Our intellectual property litigation specialists have advanced and defended cases in the English courts involving copyright infringement and database right claims.
If you have concerns about copyright infringement or and database rights that are affecting your business, please contact Waterfront here and a member of our IP & Disputes team will be in touch.
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