Seattle Times and Newsday are the latest publications to sue OpenAI and Microsoft | TechCrunch

The Seattle Times and Newsday have initiated legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming that the tech giants infringed upon their copyrights by using their journalistic output to train artificial intelligence models.

The lawsuit contends that the unchecked proliferation of generative AI systems threatens to severely damage the media industry by repurposing human-authored articles to produce derivative content. According to the plaintiffs, tools like ChatGPT and CoPilot operate as voracious consumers of copyrighted text, potentially undermining the financial viability of the very organizations that produce the original information.

This latest legal battle follows a similar high-profile lawsuit filed by The New York Times, adding momentum to a broader wave of litigation from publishers seeking compensation and protection from AI developers. The situation is particularly complex for The Seattle Times, which has previously accepted financial support from both Microsoft and OpenAI for various journalism projects and fellowship programs. Despite the escalation, Microsoft representatives expressed surprise regarding the lawsuit but maintained that the company is open to pursuing collaborative discussions to resolve the conflict.