OpenAI, Microsoft Vs Newspapers: What’s Behind The New AI Copyright Fight?

The Seattle Times and Newsday have sued OpenAI and Microsoft in a US federal court, alleging that the technology companies used their journalism without permission to train artificial intelligence (AI) systems, according to a Reuters report.

The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, claims that OpenAI and Microsoft scraped the newspapers’ websites, including articles behind paywalls. The newspapers allege that the content was then incorporated into datasets used to train and operate products such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Bing’s AI features.

The newspapers also claim that these AI products can reproduce parts of their reporting, closely paraphrase their articles and provide answers that could reduce users’ need to visit their websites or purchase subscriptions.

Newspapers Seek Destruction Of AI Datasets

The Seattle Times and Newsday are seeking a court order requiring the destruction of copies of their works, along with training datasets or AI models that incorporate their content.

Seattle Times President and CEO Alan Fisco said the newspaper believes it needs to protect journalism that costs millions of dollars a year to produce from being used without consent or compensation, according to the newspaper.

OpenAI, meanwhile, said its models are trained using publicly available data and that its practices are protected by fair use.

Microsoft Says It Is Open To Solutions

Microsoft said it was surprised by the lawsuit but acknowledged the importance of local journalism. The company said it was willing to discuss possible solutions to the dispute.

The case adds to a growing legal battle between news publishers and AI companies over how copyrighted material can be used to develop generative AI systems. Publishers have argued that AI companies should seek permission or provide compensation when using their work.

The lawsuit echoes a case filed by The New York Times in 2023 against OpenAI and Microsoft. That case alleged that millions of newspaper articles were used without permission to train OpenAI’s chatbot and remains ongoing.

The dispute is part of a broader wave of copyright lawsuits brought by content owners against AI companies including OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta. The cases could have wider implications for how AI developers obtain and use copyrighted material to train their systems.