The growing influence of artificial-intelligence systems is increasingly colliding with intellectual-property law. In March 2026, the publisher Encyclopaedia Britannica and its subsidiary Merriam-Webster filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in a U.S. federal court, alleging that their reference materials were used without permission to train large AI models. The case highlights a broader legal debate unfolding across the technology sector as publishers, artists and software companies seek clearer rules governing how machine-learning models can use copyrighted material. Developers argue that training AI systems on large datasets is necessary to produce accurate models, while critics claim that the practice can undermine the economic value of original content. Courts across the United States are now being asked to decide how existing copyright laws apply to machine-learning systems. Legal scholars say the outcomes of these cases could shape how AI companies collect training data for years to come.
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