Seattle Times, Newsday sue OpenAI, Microsoft over alleged article scraping to train AI
The newspapers are seeking the destruction of their works and AI systems or datasets containing their material, arguing that AI-generated answers can reduce visits and subscriptions.
The Seattle Times and Newsday have taken OpenAI and Microsoft to federal court, alleging that the technology companies used their journalism without permission to train and run artificial intelligence systems.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Friday, claims the companies scraped material from the newspapers’ websites, including articles available behind paywalls. The content was allegedly added to datasets used for products such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Bing’s AI features.
The newspapers, which are based in Seattle and Long Island, New York, argue that AI products from the two companies can reproduce parts of their reporting or closely rework articles. They say this can give users information without requiring them to visit the publications’ websites or purchase subscriptions.
Seattle Times President and CEO Alan Fisco said the newspaper believes it needs to protect journalism that costs millions of dollars each year to produce. His comments were made in a message to employees, according to the newspaper.
OpenAI said its models are trained using publicly available data and are based on fair-use principles. A company spokesperson did not specifically comment on the lawsuit.
Microsoft said it was surprised by the legal action but recognised the importance of local journalism. The company said it remained willing to discuss potential solutions to such disputes.
The newspapers are asking the court to order the destruction of copies of their works, along with training datasets or AI models that contain their material.
The case follows a 2023 lawsuit by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft. That case alleged that millions of newspaper articles had been used without permission to train OpenAI’s chatbot and remains ongoing. Other copyright cases have also been filed against OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta by rights holders over the use of their material in AI systems.