Seattle Times, Newsday Sue OpenAI, Microsoft Over Copyright — SkimNews
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- Seattle Times and Newsday filed copyright infringement suits against OpenAI, alleging the company used their journalism as training data without permission and often reproduces passages from their reporting in response to user queries.
- Microsoft was also named as a defendant because Copilot is built on OpenAI's technology, extending the publishers' copyright claims into Microsoft's product suite.
- The two outlets join nearly 400 local newspapers that recently sued OpenAI and Microsoft, arguing chatbots reduce the need to visit their sites for reporting and answers, costing them valuable subscription revenue.
- The suit echoes earlier actions from The New York Times, Ziff Davis, Merriam-Webster, and Encyclopedia Britannica, all of which have targeted OpenAI for alleged unauthorized use of their content in AI training.
- Seattle Times and Newsday are seeking not monetary damages but destruction of all copies of their works, the training datasets, and any AI models that incorporate their journalism.
Why it matters: With nearly 400 local newspapers and major publishers like the NYT, Ziff Davis, Merriam-Webster, and Encyclopedia Britannica already litigating, OpenAI and Microsoft face a mounting legal pile-on that threatens the foundation of their training pipelines. The publishers' demand for destruction of AI models built on their work escalates the stakes far beyond a damages fight, potentially forcing retraining or abandonment of existing models.
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