Seattle Newspapers Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over AI Training Practices

The Seattle Times and Newsday have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the technology companies used their journalism without permission to train artificial intelligence systems.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, claims that the companies scraped content from the newspapers' websites, including articles behind paywalls, and incorporated it into datasets used to train and operate AI products.

The AI products at issue include OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft's Copilot, and AI features integrated into Bing. The newspapers argue that the AI systems can reproduce passages from their reporting and closely paraphrase articles, potentially reducing the need for users to visit their websites or purchase subscriptions.

Seattle Times President and CEO Alan Fisco stated that the newspaper spends millions of dollars annually producing its journalism and needs to protect that content from being used without consent or compensation.