OTTAWA — AI systems depend on Canadian journalism for the information they provide users but don’t offer compensation or proper attribution in return, says a new study.
Researchers at McGill University’s Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy tested 2,267 Canadian news stories on major AI models.
“All four models showed extensive knowledge of Canadian current events consistent with having ingested Canadian news reporting,” the report says.
The researchers 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.
While half of the responses included at least one Canadian link, they only named a Canadian news source 28 per cent of the time, the report said.
“Links provide a pathway back to the source, but consumers reading the response itself rarely see an indication of whose journalism they are consuming,” the report said.
The report said AI companies now extract value from journalism “at every stage: ingesting news archives as training data, producing derivative content without naming the sources, and delivering answers to consumers that could reduce the need and incentive to visit the original source.”
The system “accelerates the economic decline of the journalism it relies on,” the researchers said in an accompanying policy brief.
The report was released during a national summit the federal government is holding in Banff to look at issues involving AI and culture.
In opening remarks at the summit, Culture Minister Mark Miller said there are “legitimate questions” around copyright, market-based licensing, and AI-generated content flooding the marketplace.
Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon said that during the government’s recent consultation on its upcoming AI strategy, it heard “creators need assurance that AI will be developed with guardrails.”
He added that there are “real questions” about such issues as copyright, ownership and data mining.
Solomon added that he and Miller are “open to these conversations.”
A coalition of Canadian news outlets, which includes The Canadian Press, Torstar, The Globe and Mail, Postmedia and CBC/Radio-Canada, are suing OpenAI in an Ontario court.
They argue that OpenAI is using their news content to train ChatGPT, breaching copyright and profiting from the use of that content without permission or compensation.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 16, 2026.
Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press
