OTTAWA — A new report says AI systems depend on Canadian journalism for knowledge but don’t offer compensation or proper attribution in return.
The study, which was conducted by McGill University’s Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy, involved researchers testing 2,267 Canadian news stories on four major AI models.
They found that when ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Grok were asked about Canadian news events from their training data, they did not provide source attribution about 82 per cent of the time.
They said that when the AI platforms were asked about specific articles with web access enabled, in most cases they provided enough of the original reporting in their responses to make it unnecessary for the user to visit the original news source.
The report says the system “accelerates the economic decline of the journalism it relies on.”
The report was released during a national summit the federal government is holding in Banff to look at issues around AI and culture.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 16, 2026.
Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press
