Seattle Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over Alleged Copyright Infringement

The Seattle Times has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft over alleged copyright infringement. The company claims that OpenAI's large language models are trained on copyrighted content from its published work without consent or compensation.

The lawsuit, which is similar to one filed by The New York Times in 2023, accuses OpenAI of causing substantial harm to media businesses. According to industry data, search referral traffic to midsize publishers declined by 47% year over year in December 2025.

The Seattle Times and Newsday are seeking damages as well as the destruction of all AI training sets that used their published work. Microsoft has invested billions of dollars into OpenAI since 2019 and remains a major shareholder, but a spokesperson said they are willing to 'sit down and explore solutions' to the dispute.

The lawsuit is part of a growing list of copyright complaints against OpenAI and other AI companies. In January last year, a group of 35 publishers representing over 400 community newspapers sued the company for using copyrighted content to train its language models.