Seattle Times and Newsday sue OpenAI and Microsoft over AI training on their journalism
Two more US news organizations, The Seattle Times and Newsday, have filed suit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging their journalism was used to train AI systems without permission. The lawsuit warns the practice could leave the industry irreparably damaged.
The Seattle Times and Newsday have become the latest news organizations to sue OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing the companies of using their journalism to train artificial intelligence systems without authorization.
In their filing, the two publications warn that the rise of generative AI threatens to leave the journalism industry "broken beyond repair." The lawsuit compares generative AI to "a snake eating its own tail," arguing the technology risks "destroying the very organizations" whose content it was trained on.
According to the complaint, products such as ChatGPT and Copilot are marketed as tools that produce content, but in reality function as "rapacious consumers" that absorb human-authored material and then return copies or derivative versions of it to serve commercial goals.
This is not the first case of its kind. In 2023, The New York Times sued OpenAI and its partner and investor Microsoft over alleged copyright infringement, and several other publications have since joined similar legal actions.
The Seattle Times' lawsuit stands out because Microsoft and OpenAI have previously funded some of the newspaper's journalism projects and fellowships. A Microsoft spokesperson told GeekWire the company was "surprised" by the lawsuit but remains "always happy to sit down and explore solutions to this type of dispute."
