Publishers Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over Uncompensated Use of Published Material

The Shoestring and other news publishers have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft for allegedly using their published material without permission or compensation to build products like ChatGPT.

The suit, filed in New York's Southern District, claims that the companies scraped and ingested content from over 68,000 tokens of text from The Shoestring, with other publishers affected by hundreds of thousands or even millions of tokens worth of material.

The lawsuit argues that this use of copyrighted material has generated hundreds of billions of dollars in market value for OpenAI and Microsoft without any compensation to the news publishers. The plaintiffs are represented by Platkin LLP, a firm founded by former New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin.

This suit follows similar cases brought by The New York Times and a group of local newspaper owners across the country. Notably, the Trump administration's Justice Department has filed a brief in support of OpenAI and Microsoft, citing the importance of maintaining global leadership in artificial intelligence.