Publishers Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over Alleged Copyright Violations

The Seattle Times and Newsday have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft in a US federal court in New York, alleging that their technology companies used copyrighted content from the publishers' websites to train and operate AI products. The lawsuit claims that articles, including those behind paywalls, were scraped and incorporated into datasets used by ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Bing's AI features.

The two publications argue that these AI tools can reproduce passages from their reporting, closely paraphrase their work, and provide answers that could reduce the need for users to visit their websites or subscribe to their publications. They are seeking damages and court orders for the destruction or impoundment of their content, training datasets, and AI models incorporating their work.

OpenAI stated that its models are trained on publicly available data and grounded in fair use, while Microsoft expressed surprise at the lawsuit but remained open to discussions around possible solutions. The case adds to a growing legal battle between publishers and AI companies over the use of copyrighted material in AI training.