By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA (Reuters) -Five major Canadian news media companies on Friday filed a legal action against ChatGPT owner OpenAI, accusing the artificial intelligence giant of regularly breaching copyright and online terms of use.

The case is part of a wave of lawsuits against OpenAI and other tech companies by authors, visual artists, music publishers and other copyright owners over data used to train generative AI systems. Microsoft is OpenAI's major backer.

In a statement, Torstar, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press, and CBC/Radio-Canada said OpenAI was scraping large swaths of content from media to help develop its products without getting permission or compensating content owners.

"Journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI using other companies' journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It's illegal," they said.

A New York federal judge on Nov. 7 dismissed a lawsuit against OpenAI that claimed it misused articles from news outlets Raw Story and AlterNet.

In an 84-page statement of claim filed in Ontario's superior court of justice, the five Canadian companies demanded damages from OpenAI and a permanent injunction preventing it from using their material without consent.

"Rather than seek to obtain the information legally, OpenAI has elected to brazenly misappropriate the News Media Companies’ valuable intellectual property and convert it for its own uses, including commercial uses, without consent or consideration," they said in the filing.

"The News Media Companies have never received from OpenAI any form of consideration, including payment, in exchange for OpenAI's use of their Works."

OpenAI was not immediately available for comment.

The document did not mention Microsoft. Earlier this month billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk expanded a lawsuit against OpenAI to include Microsoft, alleging the two companies illegally sought to monopolize the market for generative artificial intelligence and sideline competitors.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Chris Reese)