The Seattle Times and Newsday have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging the unauthorized use of their journalism to train artificial intelligence models.
Key facts
- •The Seattle Times and Newsday filed a joint lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft.
- •The complaint alleges that generative AI models are trained on journalism without permission.
- •The lawsuit describes AI as a system that could destroy the organizations producing the content it consumes.
- •The New York Times initiated a similar copyright infringement lawsuit against the companies in 2023.
- •Microsoft stated it is surprised by the legal action but remains open to exploring solutions.
The Seattle Times and Newsday have initiated legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming the companies use their journalistic content to train AI models without authorization. The lawsuit argues that generative AI tools threaten the sustainability of the journalism industry by consuming original work to produce derivative imitations.
Allegations of copyright infringement
The lawsuit characterizes AI products like ChatGPT and CoPilot as "rapacious consumers" of human-authored content. It claims these tools deliver copies and imitations of original journalism to achieve commercial objectives, potentially damaging the organizations that produce the source material.
Context of the legal dispute
This filing follows a 2023 lawsuit brought by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft regarding similar copyright infringement allegations. The Seattle Times' involvement is notable because the newspaper has previously received funding from both OpenAI and Microsoft for journalism projects and fellowships. A Microsoft spokesperson expressed surprise at the lawsuit but stated the company is open to discussing solutions.
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This article was independently rewritten by ManyPress editorial AI from reporting originally published by TechCrunch.
