The Seattle Times and Newsday filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging the companies used their journalism without authorization to train artificial intelligence models. The lawsuit argues that generative AI could leave the journalism industry broken beyond repair by functioning as a system that destroys the organizations producing the content it depends on.
The complaint describes AI products like ChatGPT and Copilot as consumers that take human-authored content and deliver back copies and derivative imitations to achieve commercial objectives. The publications characterized generative AI as a snake eating its own tail.
The lawsuit follows a 2023 copyright infringement case filed by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft, which other publications have since joined. The Seattle Times case is notable because Microsoft and OpenAI have funded some of the newspaper's journalism projects and fellowships.
A Microsoft spokesperson said the company is surprised by the lawsuit but is always happy to explore solutions to this type of dispute. The case adds to growing legal challenges against AI companies over their use of copyrighted material for model training.