Condé Nast, Forbes and other media giants sue AI startup Cohere

A group of 14 leading publishing companies, including Condé Nast, The Atlantic, and Forbes, has initiated legal proceedings against Cohere, a startup developing generative artificial intelligence technologies. Publishers accuse the company of “massive and systematic” copyright infringement.

According to the filed lawsuit, Cohere used at least 4,000 copyrighted works to train its AI models. Publishers claim that the company not only illegally used content for training but also allows its systems to reproduce significant portions of articles and even entire materials, negatively impacting publishers’ site traffic.

A separate point of accusation was trademark infringement: according to plaintiffs, Cohere’s AI models “hallucinate” content that was never published by these outlets but is presented as their material.

Josh Gartner, Cohere’s head of communications, issued an official statement calling the lawsuit “unfounded and frivolous.” “We firmly stand by our responsible enterprise AI training practices,” Gartner emphasized. “We have always prioritized controls that reduce the risk of intellectual property infringement and respect rights holders.”

The Cohere representative also expressed regret that publishers chose litigation over direct dialogue: “We would have welcomed discussion of their specific concerns and the opportunity to explain our enterprise-focused approach, rather than learning about them from a lawsuit.”

This litigation is the latest in a series of legal disputes against AI companies over alleged intellectual property violations. Some companies, including OpenAI, have already adopted a content licensing strategy to protect against potential legal claims, while maintaining the position that the use of copyrighted materials falls under fair use.