OpenAI & Microsoft Face Copyright Lawsuit From Seattle Times & Newsday

In an ironic turn, OpenAI and Microsoft, which contributed to a $10 million AI fellowship that included The Seattle Times and Newsday in 2024, are now being sued by both publishers over the alleged unauthorized use of their journalism to develop AI systems.

The lawsuit accuses the technology companies of using copyrighted reporting, including material behind paywalls, to train and operate products such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Bing's AI features.
 

TL;DR

 

• The Seattle Times and Newsday sued OpenAI and Microsoft for alleged copyright infringement.
• The publishers claim their articles were used without permission for AI training and can be reproduced or closely paraphrased by AI products.
• They want copies of their journalism, datasets, and AI models incorporating the material destroyed.
• OpenAI cited fair use, while Microsoft said it was open to discussing solutions.

 

Seattle Times And Newsday Allege OpenAI And Microsoft Used Journalism To Train AI

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the lawsuit alleges that OpenAI and Microsoft scraped the publishers' websites, including paywalled material, and incorporated their reporting into datasets supporting their AI products.

The newspapers claim hundreds of thousands of articles were copied without permission or payment. As an example, the complaint points to an 88-word excerpt from The Seattle Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning Boeing 737 MAX reporting that it says was reproduced almost exactly by AI systems.

More importantly for the publishers, the complaint argues that AI-generated answers can reproduce passages, closely paraphrase stories, and give users information without requiring them to visit the original websites or purchase subscriptions.
 

 

Publishers Want AI Models Containing Their Journalism Destroyed

The legal demands go beyond monetary compensation. The Seattle Times and Newsday are also seeking a court order requiring OpenAI and Microsoft to destroy copies of their works, along with training datasets or AI models incorporating the material.

Seattle Times President and CEO Alan Fisco said the publication spends millions of dollars annually producing its journalism and that it must protect its content from being used without consent or compensation.

That position puts the publishers' business model at the center of the dispute, with the complaint arguing that AI systems benefit from journalism while potentially reducing the traffic and subscription revenue available to the organizations that produced it.
 

 

OpenAI Cites Fair Use As Microsoft Signals Willingness To Talk

OpenAI said its models are trained on publicly available information and maintained that the practice is grounded in fair use, although its spokesperson did not specifically address the lawsuit.

Microsoft said it was surprised by the legal action but added that “we appreciate the importance of local journalism,” while signaling that it was willing to discuss possible solutions.

The lawsuit arrives as publishers increasingly challenge the way AI companies obtain and use copyrighted journalism. The Seattle Times and Newsday join nearly 400 local newspapers that have also sued OpenAI and Microsoft, while The New York Times and other publishers have brought separate copyright cases against AI companies.

For The Seattle Times and Newsday, however, the dispute now boils down to a fundamental question for the AI economy: whether commercial AI systems can train on and reproduce copyrighted journalism without securing permission or paying the organizations that created it.