The Seattle Times and Newsday sue OpenAI and Microsoft in U.S. federal court, accusing them of copying the newspapers’ journalism without permission to train and operate AI systems. The filings allege the companies scraped newspaper websites, including content behind paywalls, and used the material to build datasets and power products such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and AI features in Bing.
The newspapers argue that the resulting models can reproduce passages, closely paraphrase reporting, and provide answers that reduce incentives to visit websites or subscribe to content. They seek court orders requiring destruction of copies of their works and any training datasets or AI models that incorporate the alleged material. Several outlets also note the suit aligns with broader copyright cases filed by other publishers.
OpenAI and Microsoft are identified through responses that focus on legal defenses. OpenAI says its models are trained on publicly available data and are “grounded in fair use,” without commenting specifically on the case. Microsoft says it is surprised by the lawsuit but is willing to discuss solutions related to local journalism. The dispute is described as part of a wider wave of copyright litigation involving AI training data.
