United Kingdom, March 18 -- OpenAI is being sued by the dictionary firm Merriam-Webster.

The company, a subsidiary of Encylopaedia Britannica, filed a lawsuit in a Manhattan federal court last week that accuses OpenAI of using its material to train its AI models.

In the complaint, Britannica and Merriam-Webster accuse the ChatGPT developer of using its online articles, encyclopeadia and dictionary entries to teach the chatbot how to respond to human prompts.

The firms argue that ChatGPT has "cannibalised" their web traffic with AI-generated summaries of their content.

The lawsuit claims: "Defendants' ChatGPT-based AI products free ride on Plaintiffs' trusted, high-quality content - made possible through the diligent work of human rese...