TORONTO — Cohere is asking a U.S. court to throw out complaints from media outlets that have accused the artificial intelligence company of infringing on their copyright.
In a dismissal motion filed in a New York court on Thursday, Cohere accused publishers including the Toronto Star, Condé Nast, McClatchy, Forbes Media and Guardian News of deliberately using its software to "manufacture a case."
The Toronto-based company said the outlets must have "stylized" prompts they entered into Cohere's software to elicit portions of their own work, which sometimes included inaccuracies.
It argued nothing in the complaint filed by the outlets suggests that any real customer has ever used the company's software to infringe on the publisher's copyright.
"Let it be clear: The complaint offers a deafening nothing about real-world users, real-world prompts, or real-world outputs," the motion reads.
"Not a single allegation addresses what actual Cohere enterprise users have done or would do in real life."
Lawyers for the group of publishers, which also includes the Los Angeles Times, Vox, Politico and the Atlantic, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Cohere's filing.
The group sued Cohere in February, saying the company's technology repurposed articles and even produced so-called hallucinated information — AI-generated material that is false or misleading — under the publishers' names.
It said Cohere "improperly usurps publishers’ creative labour and investments for the sake of its own profits."
"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," their claim reads.
The outlets asked the court to stop Cohere from using their copyrighted works for training or fine-tuning AI models. It also wants the company to pay up to $150,000 for every article they allege the firm scraped from their websites and then trained its products on.
Asked for comment on the dismissal request, Cohere spokesperson Julia Kligman pointed The Canadian Press to a blog post the company made.
The post says the software the publishers framed their complaint around "is not a Cohere product, but a developer-focused demo environment with clear terms of use and a narrow purpose."
The post also says the outlets' case is "misguided" and shows "a lack of understanding about Cohere’s business and the uses of its technology."
"We respect the critical role that media organizations play in society," it says. "But we strongly disagree with any suggestion that Cohere’s AI solutions undermine the media industry or its business model, and we look forward to demonstrating that our technology and user base respect intellectual property laws."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 23, 2025.
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Torstar Corp. and a related company of the Globe and Mail hold investments in The Canadian Press.
Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press
