Canada, unlike most countries, lacks access to Google’s AI chatbot, Bard, due to the ongoing clash between Google and Canada’s Liberal government over the Online News Act.
Bard, Google’s equivalent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, has been recently extended to 230 countries; however, Canada, along with North Korea and Russia, has been noticeably omitted. Meanwhile, despite earlier postponing its launch in the EU over privacy worries, Bard is now available in all EU nations.
Google’s conflict with the Canadian authorities primarily revolves around the Online News Act, which, come November, would mandate tech giants such as Google and Meta to share revenues with Canadian news publishers for the content they leverage. Both companies have criticized the act as unfeasible and have started blocking news on their platforms in Canada, thereby avoiding the legislation’s implications.
In response to these concerns, the Liberal government has issued more explicit details on the bill’s implementation, suggesting a financial threshold for contributions correlated to the platforms’ estimated Canadian revenues. However, Meta is still adamant about withdrawing news from Facebook and Instagram once the law is enacted, while Google— still expressing concern about the government’s new proposal, seems more willing to negotiate.
The government’s regulation standoff is also impacting AI chatbot technology. According to Daniel Tsai, a lawyer and instructor at Toronto Metropolitan University, these ChatGPT-style AIs require access to legitimate news sources for credibility and reliability of their content. “They really do need access to legitimate news to be taken credibly, and for the reliability and authenticity and the truthfulness of content,” he told the National Post.
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