The Seattle Times and Newsday filed a federal lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft on Friday. The action alleges that the technology giants copied journalistic work without authorization to train artificial intelligence systems.
The Seattle Times and Newsday Sue OpenAI and Microsoft
According to the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the companies scraped newspaper websites—including paywalled content—to build datasets for products such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Bing’s AI features.
Accusations of Unauthorized Content Reproduction
The lawsuit argues that the defendants’ AI tools can reproduce passages from news reports, closely paraphrase articles, and supply users with answers that eliminate the need to visit news websites or purchase subscriptions.
According to court filings, the publishers are asking for an order demanding the destruction of copies of their copyrighted works, as well as the training datasets and AI models incorporating that material.
Publishers Defend Millions in Editorial Investments
“We are firmly convinced that we must defend our content—for which we dépensons [spend] millions of dollars par an [a year] to produce—so that it is not used without our consent or without compensation,” Alan Fisco, president and chief executive officer of The Seattle Times, wrote in a message to employees cited in reporting by Reuters.
Fair Use Defenses and Corporate Reactions
OpenAI stated that its models are trained on publicly available data and rely on the legal doctrine of fair use, though a spokesperson did not comment directly on the specific complaint, according to Reuters.
Meanwhile, a Microsoft spokesperson stated via email, “While we are surprised by this action in justice, we recognize the importance of local journalism and we are always happy to sit down and explore solutions to this type of dispute.”
Broad Legal Wave Hits Big Tech Developers
This legal challenge follows a similar 2023 complaint filed by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft over the use of millions of news articles without permission.
Numerous copyright holders have initiated legal proceedings against major tech developers, including Anthropic and Meta Platforms, concerning the training of generative AI models on proprietary text.
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