News outlets take OpenAI and Microsoft to court
microsoft openai
| Source: Mastodon | Original article
Seattle Times and Newsday sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging the companies used their articles without permission to train AI models.
Seattle‑based newspapers Seattle Times and Newsday have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the two companies used the papers’ articles without permission to train their large‑language‑model systems. The complaint claims that the publishers’ copyrighted content was harvested en masse and fed into the AI models that power products such as ChatGPT, thereby infringing the newspapers’ exclusive rights to reproduce and adapt their work.
The case adds to a growing wave of copyright actions targeting AI developers. As we reported on Apple’s claim against OpenAI on 11 July 2026 and the lawsuit brought by a major book publisher on 1 April 2026, rights‑holders are increasingly turning to the courts to force tech firms to obtain licences or halt the use of protected material in training data. For news organisations, the stakes are especially high: AI chatbots can reproduce excerpts of articles, potentially diverting traffic and advertising revenue while eroding the economic model that underpins investigative journalism.
What follows will hinge on how the courts interpret the balance between fair‑use doctrines and the commercial exploitation of copyrighted text. If the plaintiffs secure an injunction, OpenAI and Microsoft may have to overhaul data‑collection practices, negotiate licences with media outlets, or implement stricter content‑filtering mechanisms. Conversely, a dismissal could embolden further unlicensed data harvesting across the industry.
Stakeholders will be watching for the filing of the complaint’s detailed allegations, any early motions on jurisdiction, and the response from the AI firms, which are expected to argue that their training methods fall within permissible use. The outcome could set a precedent that shapes the future relationship between traditional media and generative‑AI providers across the Nordics and beyond.
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