Seattle Times and Newsday Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over Copyright Infringement
Regional publishers demand the destruction of training datasets and models built with their reporting.
Key highlights · 2 min read
- Two prominent regional newspapers, The Seattle Times and Newsday, have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft.
- The complaint also targets Microsoft directly due to the software giant's deep integration of OpenAI systems across its Copilot product line.
- Beyond monetary damages, The Seattle Times and Newsday are asking the court to order the destruction of all training datasets, retained copies of their articles, and any AI models that incorporate…
The Scale ReportTwo prominent regional newspapers, The Seattle Times and Newsday, have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. The publishers claim the tech giants harvested their journalism without consent to train generative AI models and that systems such as ChatGPT and Copilot regularly reproduce excerpts of their copyrighted work for users.
The complaint also targets Microsoft directly due to the software giant's deep integration of OpenAI systems across its Copilot product line. According to a report by The Verge, the action expands a wave of legal challenges brought by news organizations arguing that generative AI chatbots divert audiences away from original sources, eroding critical digital subscription revenue.
Beyond monetary damages, The Seattle Times and Newsday are asking the court to order the destruction of all training datasets, retained copies of their articles, and any AI models that incorporate their intellectual property. The demand poses a direct structural threat to foundational models if courts rule in favor of data deletion remedies.
Escalating Publisher Resistance
This legal action adds to an increasingly crowded docket of copyright claims confronting OpenAI. The New York Times, Ziff Davis, Merriam-Webster, and Encyclopedia Britannica have previously brought similar lawsuits. Additionally, nearly 400 local newsrooms have joined collective legal actions against OpenAI and Microsoft, contending that unauthorized web scraping threatens the economic viability of local journalism.
The core legal fight hinges on whether training commercial AI systems on copyrighted text qualifies as fair use under US law. While AI developers maintain that ingesting public internet content to discover patterns is transformative, publishers argue that deploying tools that directly substitute for the underlying reporting crosses the line into wholesale copyright infringement.
Neither OpenAI nor Microsoft immediately responded to requests for comment regarding the litigation.
Reporting based on coverage from AI | The Verge.
