Ottawa –
The federal government is dodging questions about whether artificial intelligence companies should pay Canadian news publishers for content that their chatbots openly use.
Last year, the Liberal government passed the Online News Bill, which requires some technology companies to negotiate content licensing agreements with news publishers.
The government has not said whether the law should also apply to AI services such as the hugely popular chatbots.
Models like Microsoft's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Meta AI have all acknowledged using Canadian news for training and to provide answers to users' questions.
Heritage Minister Pascal Saintonge's office said it was up to Canada's broadcasting regulator to determine whether an AI service reproduced news as defined by law.
“We are closely monitoring developments in artificial intelligence and its impact on the news industry,” the network said in a statement.
Companies had until last week to tell the Canadian Broadcasting Commission whether the law applies to their platforms; the list has not yet been made public.
Meta said its AI system is exempt from the law because it obtains information from web sources that are not regulated by the law.
Google has completed negotiations with the government to set up a media fund and is already on track to receive the exemption, but Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment.
Since the Online News Act was passed, AI chatbots have become mainstream, providing human-like communication with users for a variety of tasks, including answering questions, providing recommendations, and summarizing news articles.
ChatGPT uses publicly available information from various news sources, including Canadian news sites, the chatbot said, which includes accessing information from websites, articles and other online resources.
Google's Gemini will not access and process information directly from Canadian news sites, the chatbot said, but the news articles will become part of Gemini's training data and may play a role in enhancing Gemini's knowledge and capabilities.
The Meta AI chatbot uses news sites to answer users' questions and has been trained on a vast amount of data, including news articles from Canadian sources.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was recently asked on a New York Times technology podcast whether the law should be extended to include AI and make such companies pay for distributing Canadian news.
He sidestepped the question, saying the onus is on the platforms to act responsibly.
“What I don't want is for the government to make laws telling platforms what they should or shouldn't do. That's just a recipe for disaster. We all know how slow governments are at their work,” he said on the Hard Fork Podcast.
“But can we place the burden of leadership and responsibility increasingly on the platforms — around journalism, protecting free speech, protecting against hate speech — and can we find that balance?”
In addition to the Online News Act and Online Streaming Act, which would impose new requirements on the streaming giants, the Trudeau government has also proposed legislation that would allow it to regulate and penalize companies over their online safety practices, a bill still before Parliament.
When it comes to the Online News Act, Canadian Heritage has previously said the law only applies to two companies: Google and Meta.
The law states that platforms will be subject to the law if they share news or repurpose news on their online platforms and meet other criteria.
Google would receive the exemption by agreeing to pay $100 million a year, indexed against inflation, to Canadian news publishers.
To comply with the law, Meta has blocked news links from its Instagram and Facebook platforms for Canadian users.
“We comply with the Online News Act,” a Meta spokesman said in a statement.
“In Canada, Meta AI answers questions from sources on the web that are not restricted by this law, and sources its results from search engine partners.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 17, 2024.
