Encyclopedia Britannica and its ⁠Merriam-Webster subsidiary ⁠have sued OpenAI in Manhattan federal court for allegedly misusing their reference materials to train its artificial intelligence models. Britannica said in the complaint ‌that Microsoft-backed OpenAI used ‌its ‌online articles and encyclopedia and ‌dictionary entries to teach its flagship ⁠chatbot ChatGPT to respond to human prompts and "cannibalised" Britannica's web traffic with AI-generated summaries of its content. "Our models empower innovation, and are trained on ​publicly available data and grounded in fair use," an OpenAI spokesperson said ⁠in response to the lawsuit. Spokespeople and attorneys for Britannica did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The case is one of many high-stakes lawsuits filed by copyright owners including authors and news outlets against tech companies for using their material to train AI systems without permission.  Britannica filed a ​related lawsuit against artificial intelligence ⁠startup Perplexity AI last year that ⁠is still ongoing. AI companies have argued that their systems make fair use ​of copyrighted content by transforming it into something ‌new. Britannica's lawsuit ⁠said that OpenAI unlawfully copied nearly 100,000 of its articles to train GPT large language models. The complaint said that ChatGPT ‌produces "near-verbatim" copies of Britannica's encyclopedia entries, dictionary definitions and other content, diverting users who would otherwise visit its websites. Britannica also accused OpenAI of infringing its ​trademarks by implying that it has permission to reproduce its material and wrongfully citing Britannica in false AI "hallucinations." Britannica requested an unspecified ‌amount of ⁠monetary damages and ​a court order blocking the alleged infringement.