AI chatbots use Canadian news, but Ottawa won't say if they should be paying for it

The federal government is dodging questions about whether artificial intelligence companies should be paying Canadian news publishers for content their chatbots are openly using.

Last year, the Liberal government passed the Online News Act, which requires some tech companies to negotiate licensing agreements with news publishers to use their content.

The government won't say if the law should also apply to AI services, such as massively popular chatbots.

Models like ChatGPT, which is operated by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, along with Google's Gemini and Meta AI all admit to using Canadian news to either train or provide answers to users' questions.