Seattle Times and Newsday sue OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement
The news outlets allege their journalism was used as training data without permission and their reporting is reproduced in AI responses.
What happened
The Seattle Times and Newsday filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming the companies used their journalism as training data without permission and that the AI models often reproduce passages from their reporting in user responses. Microsoft was included as a defendant because Copilot is built on OpenAI's technology. The plaintiffs are seeking destruction of copies of their works, training datasets, and AI models that incorporate their content. This lawsuit joins similar cases filed by The New York Times, Ziff Davis, Merriam-Webster, and Encyclopedia Britannica against OpenAI, and follows a broader wave in which nearly 400 local newspapers sued the two companies.
Context
The lawsuits reflect a core dispute over the use of published content in AI training without compensation or permission. The newspapers argue that AI chatbots reduce user traffic to their sites and diminish subscription revenue by providing direct answers without requiring visits to news outlets. The scale of litigation—involving major national publishers, specialized reference works, and hundreds of local newspapers—indicates widespread concern across the media industry about AI systems trained on proprietary journalism. The plaintiffs' demand for model destruction represents an escalated remedy beyond damages, seeking to eliminate products built using their content.