Seattle Times and Newsday sue OpenAI and Microsoft over AI training on their journalism

The Seattle Times and Newsday jointly filed a lawsuit on Friday against OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing the companies of training AI models on their copyrighted journalism without permission. The complaint argues that with the advent of AI, the journalism industry could become broken beyond repair, and describes generative AI as a snake eating its own tail that could destroy the organizations producing the content it consumes. The publishers allege that OpenAI and Microsoft methodically scraped news articles in ways that bypass paywalls. They claim products like ChatGPT and Copilot give users an AI-generated substitute for news articles, reducing traffic and digital advertising revenue. The suit also alleges that the models produce hallucinations that attribute false information to the outlets and that copyright management information was stripped from articles. The case adds to a growing list of news organizations pursuing AI companies in court. The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, and other publications have followed as that case continued. The Seattle Times filing is notable because Microsoft and OpenAI have funded some of the paper's journalism projects and fellowships. A Microsoft spokesperson told GeekWire that the company was surprised by the lawsuit but is always happy to sit down and explore solutions to this type of dispute.