In the complaint, Thomson Reuters claimed the AI firm reproduced materials from its legal research firm Westlaw. "None of Ross's possible defenses holds water. I reject them all," wrote US District Court of Delaware judge Stephanos Bibas, in a summary judgement. Thomson Reuters and Ross Intelligence did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Right now, there are several dozen lawsuits currently winding through the US court system, as well as international challenges in China, Canada, the UK, and other countries. Notably, Judge Bibas ruled in Thomson Reuters' favor on the question of fair use.

But it's now clear that the case--filed more than two years before the generative AI boom began--was the first strike in a much larger war between content publishers and artificial intelligence companies now unfolding in courts across the country. The outcome could make, break, or reshape the information ecosystem and the entire AI industry--and in doing so, impact just about everyone across the internet. The plaintiffs include individual authors like Sarah Silverman and Ta Nehisi-Coates, visual artists, media companies like The New York Times, and music-industry giants like Universal Music Group. This wide variety of rights holders are alleging that AI companies have used their work to train what are often highly lucrative and powerful AI models in a manner that is tantamount to theft. Nearly every major generative AI company has been pulled into this legal fight, including OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, Google, Anthropic, and Nvidia.

The brain that wrote your favorite novel consumed Dickens and Austen, Pynchon and Didion. The brain that wrote this article devoured Bradbury and Orwell, Ishiguro and Octavia Butler. But the "brain" that powers that chatbot you played around with over the weekend ingested 170,000 books, all so it can spit out language that sounds smart, colorful, or helpful--even if it's really not. But language-guzzling artificial intelligence models, which need to "train" on existing works, present a bigger challenge. In July, a group of writers including comedian Sarah Silverman and novelist Michael Chabon filed suits against OpenAI and Meta, alleging that the companies improperly trained their models on the authors' books.

Ross Intelligence, an artificial intelligence startup for the legal industry, has filed a counterclaim against Thomson Reuters as part of an ongoing legal battle between the two companies. The counterclaim was filed just days after Ross Intelligence publicly announced it is shutting down operations. In a company blog post from December 11, Ross Intelligence's founders stated the startup's platform will no longer be operational as of January 31. "We have not abandoned our vision for access to justice through the use of technology. We will continue to fight the good fight."

In a survey conducted by Gurugram-based BML Munjal University (School of Law) in July 2020, it was found that about 42% of lawyers believed that in the next 3 to 5 years as much as 20% of regular, day-to-day legal works could be performed with technologies such as artificial intelligence. The survey also found that about 94% of law practitioners favoured research and analytics as to the most desirable skills in young lawyers. Earlier this year, Chief Justice of India SA Bobde, in no uncertain terms, underlined that the Indian judiciary must equip itself with incorporating artificial intelligence in its system, especially in dealing with document management and cases of repetitive nature. With more industries and professional sectors embracing AI and data analytics, the legal industry, albeit in a limited way, is no exception. According to the 2020 report of the National Judicial Data Grid, over the last decade, 3.7 million cases were pending across various courts in India, including high courts, district and taluka courts.

RoboReview, made by Turbo Patent, helps patent practitioners review and analyze patent applications. Like a spell-checker, the program reads the applications, suggests changes based on patent eligibility, novelty and other matters, and spit out a report that normally would get prepared by paralegals or other patent attorneys. EVA made by ROSS Intelligence is an amazing legal research tool that allows litigators and researchers to simply drop a brief, or pleading, or document, into the program and get back a hyperlinked list of every cited case. In addition to returning every cited cases, the tool also provides information as to whether those cases have received positive or negative treatment. Setting EVA apart from nearly every other AI tool for lawyers, ROSS Intelligence is offering EVA to everyone for free (and as of now, there is no catch, no credit card required, nor trial period; but email sign up is required).

Artificial intelligence is not a new concept. The underpinnings of AI have been kicked around, at times inadvertently, by an amazing series of mankind's most famous philosophers and thinkers, mathematicians and computer scientists, theoreticians and psychologists. AI has, in its own peculiar DNA, a neural network of the greatest thoughts and minds of humankind. Consider this star-runged ladder of human thought: Aristotle bestowed us logic and reason. Descartes declared "I think, therefore I am," proposing a duality of mind and body.

Jimoh Ovbiagele is the Chief Technology Officer & co-founder of ROSS Intelligence. He is a self-taught programmer, starting at the age of 10, who founded several startups in college and worked on self-driving cars. When he was 21, Jimoh came up with the idea for and co-founded ROSS Intelligence. Two years later, he was named by the American Bar Association as a Legal Rebel and by Forbes as one of their 30 Under 30. He speaks around the world -- from Canada to China -- about artificial intelligence and the future of law.

ROSS Intelligence and Sedgwick LLP are pleased to announce their partnership. Sedgwick will bringing the power of ROSS Intelligence's advanced artificial intelligence (AI) to its Creditors' Rights and Bankruptcy group. "We are excited to be on the cutting edge of new technology to provide superior and more efficient service to our clients," said Mike Healy, Sedgwick Chair of the Firm. "Our firm's Creditors' Rights and Bankruptcy Practice is already using AI to enhance our legal research, making it faster to analyze complex legal issues and to discover relevant'connect-the-dots' information that otherwise might go unnoticed. This technology will allow us to best represent, protect and advance the interests of our clients."

The news seemed to arrive all at once, even though Canada has long been at the forefront of technology, from Vancouver's film studios to Montreal's world-class animation talent. But in the past few months, things were different. Everyone seemed to come together (a rarity) and as a group, all parties were thinking ahead (another rarity): academia, government, non-profit organizations and businesses all came out in strong support of artificial intelligence research and development. The announcements were made in relatively quick succession: A new federal budget would provide $125 million to improve Canada's competitive and strategic advantage in AI. The University of Toronto's Vector Institute would hire roughly 25 new faculty and research scientists devoted to the field of artificial intelligence.