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

The Seattle Times Co. and Newsday have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, alleging the companies scraped hundreds of thousands of news articles without permission or compensation to train their generative artificial intelligence models. The lawsuit claims the tech giants bypassed paywalls and violated terms of service, creating AI outputs that compete directly with original journalism. The plaintiffs are seeking financial damages as well as the destruction of datasets and AI models built using their copyrighted materials. This legal action adds to mounting copyright pressures facing Microsoft and OpenAI, joining similar consolidated actions from The New York Times, Daily News, Ziff Davis, and the Center for Investigative Reporting. While OpenAI has secured multi-million-dollar licensing agreements with outlets like News Corp and Axel Springer, accumulating over $300 million across major deals, the expanding litigation underscores rising legal risks and potential content licensing costs that could impact operational models and profit margins across the generative AI sector.