Newspapers Sue OpenAI and Microsoft for Alleged AI Content Scraping

The Seattle Times and Newsday have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement. The newspapers claim that the tech companies scraped their websites, including content behind paywalls, to train AI systems such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.

According to the lawsuit, OpenAI and Microsoft's AI products can reproduce passages from the newspapers' reporting, closely paraphrase articles, and provide users with answers that reduce the need to visit their websites or buy subscriptions. The Seattle Times President and CEO Alan Fisco stated that the companies are using their content without consent or compensation.

OpenAI responded by saying that its models are trained on publicly available data and grounded in fair use, while Microsoft expressed surprise at the lawsuit but acknowledged the importance of local journalism.