The Seattle Times and Newsday have jointly sued OpenAI and Microsoft in federal court, accusing them of scraping copyrighted articles—including paywalled content—without permission to train AI models like ChatGPT and Copilot. The publishers argue this practice diverts web traffic and ad revenue, threatening local journalism. OpenAI defends its training as fair use, while Microsoft has expressed surprise but willingness to negotiate. The suit seeks the destruction of offending datasets and models.
Newspaper copyright lawsuit
- ▪The Seattle Times and Newsday are seeking a court order requiring the destruction of copies of their copyrighted works, along with training datasets or artificial intelligence models that incorporate their material.
- ▪The Seattle Times and Newsday filed a joint lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft on September 4, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging unauthorized use of their copyrighted journalism.
AI training data scraping
- ▪The Seattle Times and Newsday claimed that OpenAI and Microsoft's artificial intelligence models reproduce passages from their reporting, closely paraphrase their articles, and remove copyright management information.
- ▪The Seattle Times and Newsday alleged that OpenAI and Microsoft methodically scraped their websites to incorporate articles into datasets used to train and operate artificial intelligence products, including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Bing's AI features.
Paywall content unauthorized use
- ▪The Seattle Times and Newsday alleged that OpenAI and Microsoft scraped content from the newspapers' websites that was protected behind paywalls.
- ▪The Seattle Times and Newsday asserted that the unauthorized scraping of paywalled content bypasses their subscription barriers to train commercial artificial intelligence systems.
Business revenue impact
- ▪The Seattle Times and Newsday claimed that artificial intelligence products provide users with alternative answers that reduce website traffic, digital advertising revenue, and subscription purchases.
- ▪Seattle Times President and CEO Alan Fisco stated that the newspaper spends millions of dollars annually to produce its journalism, necessitating defense against unauthorized use without consent or compensation.
Fair use defense claims
- ▪An OpenAI spokesperson stated that the company's artificial intelligence models are trained on publicly available data and that its practices are grounded in fair use.
- ▪A Microsoft spokesperson expressed surprise at the lawsuit, acknowledged the importance of local journalism, and stated that Microsoft is willing to discuss solutions to the dispute.
Industry-wide litigation pattern
- ▪The New York Times filed a similar copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, which remains ongoing.
- ▪Copyright holders have initiated a broader wave of legal battles against technology companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta, over the alleged improper use of copyrighted material to train artificial intelligence systems.
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