Seattle Times and Newsday Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over Unauthorized AI Training on Their Journalism

Court Filings In A.I. Suit Invoke Copyright Law, Culture and Sports

Mike Isaac reported from San Francisco, and Karen Weise from Seattle. Court filings made Friday in a closely watched copyright trial pitting The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft invoked a wide range of material, including relevant copyright law, arts and sports. The suit, filed in 2023 by The Times and joined by a group of other news outlets, claims that OpenAI, a leading artificial intelligence start-up, and its partner Microsoft infringed on the publishers' copyrighted material by using millions of their articles to train A.I. technologies. A.I. companies now compete with The Times as a source of information, the news outlet argued in its suit. The briefs, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, largely boiled down to two questions: whether the publishers' news articles were sufficiently "transformed" into an entirely new work by A.I., and whether A.I. produced content that "substituted" for news articles and harmed their value. Friday was the last day the companies could file motions for a summary judgment that would head off a trial. Judge Sidney H. Stein is expected to make a ruling in the coming weeks. The Times claimed that its articles were not transformed by the tech companies and not subject to "fair use" protections under copyright law. The Times also argued that A.I. products from OpenAI and Microsoft acted as a substitute for the outlet's work. Lawyers for The Times said OpenAI and Microsoft had illegally copied news publishers' articles in several ways in the process of building their A.I. "The future not just of journalism but of responsible A.I., too, depends on preserving incentives for humans to produce the creative works on which a healthy society depends," The Times wrote in its filing. OpenAI and Microsoft have vigorously defended themselves against the suit's claims. In its motion, Microsoft argued that existing copyright law "does not permit rights holders to block transformative technologies," such as Microsoft's A.I. product called Copilot. In a separate but similar argument, OpenAI said in its filing that "these technologies put the world's facts within reach of anyone who asks, in whatever form is most useful to them." "That is progress, and copyright law does not stand in its way," the filing continued. The court filings also meandered through a range of topics, including Lord Byron, Andy Warhol and the old New York Giants baseball team. In Microsoft's filing, the company noted that Byron -- the 19th-century British poet, who thought, the filing said, that "literature and science were at odds" -- was the father of Ada Lovelace, who was recognized by many as the world's first computer scientist. Lovelace, Microsoft wrote, saw early computers as examples of "poetical science" and engines of progress and creativity. The company saw no better proof of that than the A.I. programs at the heart of the case. The Times nodded to an instance when Warhol fell afoul of copyright law. A court found him guilty of infringing on another artist's photograph of the rock star Prince. Warhol made a silk-screened version of the photo, but the Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that it did not constitute fair use. Making a broader point about the breadth of its technology while also winking to the home turf of the Southern District, OpenAI referred to a web search for the Giants' 1951 National League pennant. (The team went on to lose to the New York Yankees in the World Series.) The lawsuit is being closely watched by legal scholars, news publishers and the world's most powerful technology companies. Most A.I. copyright lawsuits are still in their early phases, and none have gone to trial. Only a few have had rulings on crucial legal issues, according to a tracker founded by Ed Lee, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law. The news organizations said it would be impossible for OpenAI and Microsoft to prove their products did not clearly harm the market for news. The Times argued that its business was harmed through substantially lower click-through rates to its articles when traditional search links to Times works were replaced with generative A.I. summaries in search results. That substitution is crucial for proving that the A.I. systems do not sufficiently transform the works into new forms of expression, The Times and other media organizations said. Citing expert witnesses, OpenAI argued that The Times's and other plaintiffs' businesses were not harmed because their web traffic was "not negatively impacted" by ChatGPT, its popular chatbot.

Seattle Times sues Microsoft and OpenAI, alleging they trained their AI on its journalism

Microsoft was sued Friday by the parent company of its hometown daily newspaper, The Seattle Times Co., which joined with Newsday to accuse the Redmond tech giant and OpenAI of using their journalism to train their artificial intelligence models. The lawsuit alleges that the companies scraped hundreds of thousands of Seattle Times and Newsday articles -- bypassing paywalls and ignoring terms of service -- to train their AI models. It seeks financial damages and the destruction of any training datasets and models built with their content. "Like a snake eating its own tail, GenAI that is trained on painstakingly researched, expensive-to-produce content threatens to destroy the very news organizations by competing directly with them through AI-generated substitutive content," the suit says. "If Defendants are allowed to succeed, independent journalism of the kind Plaintiffs produce will struggle to survive." The case is notable in part because the Seattle Times is suing two of its own funders. Microsoft Philanthropies underwrites some Seattle Times journalism projects. In 2024, Microsoft and OpenAI jointly funded a $10 million Lenfest Institute AI fellowship that included both the Seattle Times and Newsday among its inaugural participating newsrooms. The Times says it maintains editorial independence. A Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement Friday evening, "While we're surprised by the lawsuit, we appreciate the importance of the Seattle Times to our region and we're always happy to sit down and explore solutions to this type of dispute." It's not clear if there were negotiations or licensing talks in advance of the suit. GeekWire has contacted The Seattle Times Co. for comment. In its own coverage of the lawsuit Friday evening, the newspaper quoted a memo from Seattle Times Co. President and CEO Alan Fisco, saying: "This was not an easy decision. However, we feel strongly that we must defend our content -- which we spend millions of dollars a year to produce -- from being used without our consent or compensation." Fisco, a longtime Seattle Times executive, took over as CEO on Jan. 1, succeeding Frank Blethen, who led the paper for 40 years and remains chair of the board. Ryan Blethen, Frank Blethen's son and a fifth-generation member of the family that has owned the paper since 1896, became publisher in the same transition. The complaint Friday includes examples of ChatGPT reproducing Seattle Times and Newsday journalism nearly word for word, including an 88-word verbatim stretch from The Seattle Times' Pulitzer-winning coverage of the Boeing 737 MAX crashes, generated when a user prompted the chatbot with just the article's headline and web address. The suit echoes The New York Times' 2023 copyright case against the same defendants, which just this week drew a U.S. Justice Department brief siding with Microsoft and OpenAI, arguing that a ruling for the publishers would stifle American AI development. The newspapers join a growing list of publishers suing OpenAI and Microsoft over AI training. In addition to the New York Times, that includes the New York Daily News, Ziff Davis and the Center for Investigative Reporting, all consolidated before U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein in Manhattan. On Friday, the publishers in that case moved for summary judgment, as did OpenAI and Microsoft. OpenAI has struck licensing deals with more than a dozen other outlets, including The Associated Press, News Corp and Axel Springer. Publicly disclosed terms of three of those deals top $300 million, according to the Seattle Times complaint.

The Seattle Times sues OpenAI, Microsoft over copyright infringement

The Seattle Times Co. is suing OpenAI and Microsoft, in the latest move by media companies crying foul over artificial intelligence players' alleged copyright violations. In a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court, The Seattle Times, joined by Newsday, accused OpenAI of using the outlets' published work to train large language models, also known as chatbots. "This was not an easy decision," Seattle Times President and CEO Alan Fisco wrote in a memo to employees Friday. "However, we feel strongly that we must defend our content -- which we spend millions of dollars a year to produce -- from being used without our consent or compensation." Microsoft and OpenAI didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Microsoft has invested billions of dollars into OpenAI since 2019, and it remains the primary cloud computing partner. The two companies worked closely to create the large language models behind ChatGPT, which catapulted generative AI technology into the mainstream. Microsoft has also worked with OpenAI to develop its Copilot large language models. Though the partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI has been amended to grant more independence to the latter, Microsoft said in April that it is still a major shareholder in OpenAI. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is similar to one filed by The New York Times in 2023. The outlet accused OpenAI and Microsoft of pilfering its stories to develop AI models. The companies have argued that their generative AI technology trains on copyrighted work and generates new material, which is allowed under the "fair use" doctrine of copyright law. This week, the Justice Department sided with the tech companies. In a Tuesday filing, the Justice Department argued that AI's development was a matter of national interest; therefore, if a judge found that OpenAI and Microsoft had violated copyright, it would stifle "scientific progress while hindering American prosperity and economic mobility." The Justice Department's filing also said that the "creative possibilities" and potential benefits of AI models "far outweigh any competitive harm" that could come from training models on content from publishers. The Seattle Times' lawsuit joins a growing list of copyright complaints against OpenAI and other AI companies, including lawsuits from publishers as well as class-action lawsuits from authors and musicians. Two years ago, a group of daily newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital sued OpenAI over copyright infringement. Last year, a band of 35 publishers representing over 400 community newspapers sued the company as well. Anthropic, an OpenAI rival, reached a $1.5 billion settlement with a group of authors and publishers last year. In the lawsuit, filed in 2024, lawyers representing the coalition accused Anthropic of using copyrighted books to train its Claude models. Microsoft Philanthropies underwrites some Seattle Times journalism projects, though the news organization maintains editorial independence. The Seattle Times Co., along with several other publishers, also received a grant from The Lenfest Institute for Journalism to hire a two-year AI fellow in 2024. The purpose of the program was to pursue projects regarding business sustainability and implementing AI throughout the organization. Microsoft and OpenAI funded the fellowship with $10 million. The Seattle Times has used that grant for some advertising functions. The newsroom has some ChatGPT licenses to aid in data analysis. The Seattle Times has publicly listed its policy regarding AI use within the newsroom. The newspaper may use AI tools for limited tasks -- transcribing notes and analyzing data -- after they go through a rigorous risk evaluation, but each instance is clearly labeled on stories in which AI tools played a significant role in story production. The Seattle Times does not use AI to generate stories. The Seattle Times and Newsday are seeking damages as well as the destruction of all AI training sets that used their published work. This story will be updated.

Seattle Times, Newsday sue OpenAI, Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement

The suit in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York alleges that OpenAI and Microsoft scraped the newspapers' websites, including ⁠content ⁠behind paywalls, and incorporated articles into datasets used to train and operate products including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Bing's AI features. The Seattle Times and Newsday sued OpenAI and Microsoft on Friday, alleging in federal court that the tech companies copied the newspapers' journalism without permission to train their AI systems. The suit in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York alleges that OpenAI and Microsoft scraped the newspapers' websites, including ⁠content ⁠behind paywalls, and incorporated articles into datasets used to train and operate products including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Bing's AI features. The newspapers, based in Seattle and Long Island, New York, said the companies' AI products can reproduce passages from their reporting, closely paraphrase articles and provide users with answers that reduce the need to visit their websites or buy subscriptions. "We feel strongly that we must defend ⁠our content - which we spend millions of dollars a year to produce - from being used without our consent or compensation," Seattle Times President and CEO ⁠Alan Fisco wrote to employees, according to the newspaper. A spokesperson for San Francisco-based OpenAI said its models are trained on publicly available data and grounded in fair use, without commenting specifically on the lawsuit. A spokesperson for Microsoft, based near Seattle in Washington state, said in an email: "While we're surprised by the lawsuit, we appreciate the importance of local journalism and we're always happy to sit down and explore solutions to this type of dispute." The Seattle Times and Newsday are seeking an order requiring the destruction of copies of their works as well as training datasets or ⁠AI models incorporating them. The lawsuit echoes a case filed by the New York Times in 2023, which accused OpenAI and Microsoft of using millions of newspaper articles without permission to train OpenAI's popular chatbot. The case is ongoing, and is one of dozens brought by copyright holders against tech companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta for what they say is misuse of their material to train AI systems.

OpenAI, Microsoft Face Copyright Lawsuit from US Publishers

OpenAI and Microsoft are facing a new legal challenge from two major US news organizations over the alleged use of their journalism to train artificial intelligence systems. The Seattle Times and Newsday accused the companies of copying their articles without permission and using them to train and operate AI products. The newspapers also claimed their websites were scraped, including content available only to paying subscribers. The publishers argued that can reproduce or closely rewrite their work. According to the newspapers, such outputs could reduce the need for readers to visit their websites or pay for subscriptions. The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The news publishers claimed OpenAI and Microsoft used their content in datasets linked to products including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and AI features in Bing. The newspapers also stressed the cost of producing journalism. Seattle Times President and CEO Alan Fisco wrote to employees: "We feel strongly that we must defend our content, which we spend millions of dollars a year to produce, from being used without our consent or compensation." the suggestion that it acted outside copyright law. A company spokesperson said its AI models are trained using publicly available information and are based on fair use. Microsoft also responded to the lawsuit, saying it was surprised by the case while recognizing the importance of local news organizations. Also Read: "While we are surprised by the lawsuit, we appreciate the importance of local journalism, and we are always happy to sit down and explore solutions to this type of dispute," a Microsoft spokesperson said. The Seattle Times and Newsday are asking the court to order the companies to destroy copies of their work. They also want training datasets and AI models containing their copyrighted material destroyed. The case adds to a growing list of copyright disputes involving AI companies and content creators. The New York Times filed a similar lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023. This case remains ongoing. Several other copyright owners also filed legal actions against AI companies over the use of copyrighted material in AI training.

Seattle Times, Newsday sue OpenAI and Microsoft over AI training By Investing.com

Investing.com -- The Seattle Times and Newsday sued OpenAI and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) on Friday, accusing the technology companies of using their journalism without permission to train artificial intelligence systems, Reuters reported. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges the companies scraped content from the newspapers' websites, including articles behind paywalls, and incorporated the material into datasets used to train and operate AI products. Those products include OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft's Copilot and AI features integrated into Bing, according to the complaint. The newspapers argue that the AI systems can reproduce passages from their reporting and closely paraphrase articles. They also allege that AI-generated answers can reduce the need for users to visit their websites or purchase subscriptions. Seattle Times President and CEO Alan Fisco said the newspaper spends millions of dollars annually producing its journalism and needs to protect that content from being used without consent or compensation. OpenAI said its models are trained on publicly available data and that its practices are grounded in fair use, but did not comment specifically on the lawsuit. Microsoft said it was surprised by the legal action, adding that it recognizes the importance of local journalism and is willing to discuss potential solutions to such disputes. The Seattle Times and Newsday are seeking an order requiring the destruction of copies of their copyrighted works, along with training datasets or AI models incorporating the material. The case adds to a growing number of copyright disputes involving AI developers and publishers. The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023 over similar allegations, while other copyright holders have brought cases against AI companies including Anthropic and Meta Platforms.

OpenAI and Microsoft face legal heat from news publishers over copyright infringement claims

The newspapers claimed their websites were scrapped, including content available only to paying subscribers OpenAI and Microsoft are facing a new legal challenge from two major US news organisations over alleged use of their journalism to train AI systems. The Seattle Times and Newsday accused the companies of copying their articles without permission and using them to train and operate AI products, reports Reuters. The newspapers claimed their websites were scrapped, including content available only to paying subscribers. They also argued that AI tools can reproduce or closely rewrite their work. According to the publishers, this could reduce the need for readers to visit their websites or pay for subscriptions. The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The news publishers claimed that OpenAI and Microsoft used their content in datasets linked to products such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and AI features in Bing. Also read: OpenAI AI agents hack German site in undisclosed incident, use it to coordinate and bypass restrictions The publishers also said that their journalism is expensive to produce. They argued that using their work without permission or payment hurts their businesses. "We feel strongly that we must defend our content - which we spend millions of dollars a year to produce - from being used without our consent or compensation," Seattle Times President and CEO Alan Fisco wrote to employees, as per the report. OpenAI rejected the idea that it had acted outside copyright law. A company spokesperson argued that its AI models are trained using publicly available information and are based on fair use. Also read: After OpenAI AI agent incident, US lawmakers seek ban on superintelligent AI Microsoft also responded to the case. The company said it was surprised by the lawsuit but recognised the importance of local news organisations. "While we're surprised by the lawsuit, we appreciate the importance of local journalism and we're always happy to sit down and explore solutions to this type of dispute," a Microsoft spokesperson was quoted as saying in the report. The Seattle Times and Newsday are asking the court to order the companies to destroy copies of their work. They also want the destruction of training datasets and AI models that contain their copyrighted material. The New York Times filed a similar lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023. That case is still ongoing. Several other copyright owners have also taken legal action against AI companies.