It Started at $650.88.
The first domino of the AI legal era wasn't a billion-dollar headline. It was a chatbot at Air Canada giving a man the wrong bereavement-fare rule. A tribunal made the airline pay him $650.88. Two years later, here is the tab.
Air Canada argued, in tribunal, that its website chatbot was “a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions.” The tribunal said no, and held the airline responsible for what its bot told a customer. Moffatt v. Air Canada, 2024. $650.88.
The other door — sue, then licence. Many didn’t hold out for a verdict. They signed:
It is now a business model: block the crawler, file the suit, cash the licence.
The licence ledger:
- News Corp → OpenAI — ≈ $250M / 5 yrs (reported)
- The New York Times → Amazon — ≈ $20–25M / yr
- Axel Springer → OpenAI — tens of millions / yr (since Dec 2023)
- Dotdash Meredith → OpenAI — ≥ $16M / yr (floor)
The maths:
| Case | Amount |
|---|---|
| Anthropic — authors (settled) | $1.5B |
| Anthropic — music publishers (sought) | $3B |
| Suno — the labels (theoretical ceiling) | $9.1B |
| NYT v. OpenAI (reported estimate) | ~$2.25B |
| Louis v. SafeRent (settled) | $2.275M |
| DoNotPay — FTC (monetary relief) | $193K |
Total, by our count: $12.5B+
Footnotes
- Moffatt v. Air Canada, British Columbia Civil Resolution Tribunal, 2024 — $650.88, via CanLII. Licence figures per WSJ, GeekWire and company announcements; the Suno $9.1B is a theoretical statutory ceiling, not a demand. The DoNotPay $193,000 is FTC monetary relief, not a penalty. FTC; Music Business Worldwide; all as reported.