The Seattle Times and Newsday filed a joint lawsuit on Friday against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the tech giants trained their generative AI systems using copyrighted news content without permission. The two outlets described the practice as self-destructive, likening it to “a snake eating its own tail” that threatens to destroy the very publishers fueling the technology.
In the legal filing, the news organizations accused OpenAI and Microsoft of systematically scraping articles while bypassing paywalls. They argued that this approach has damaged their business models by offering AI-generated alternatives to original reporting, which has led to decreased website traffic and lower digital advertising revenue. Additionally, the lawsuit claimed the AI models produce hallucinations that falsely attribute misinformation to the outlets and strip copyright management information from articles.
This action adds to an expanding wave of litigation from media companies against AI developers. In 2023, The New York Times established a precedent by suing OpenAI and Microsoft over similar grievances, and CNN recently filed suit against Perplexity earlier this year. In contrast, organizations such as the Associated Press and Vox Media have chosen to partner with OpenAI, granting the company authorization to train its models on their content.
This is a huge moment for journalism. If they lose, local papers might not survive the AI wave.
Wait, they actually scraped past paywalls? That is straight-up theft of access, not just content. Unacceptable.
Makes sense they are suing, but how do you train modern AI without any data at all? Seems like a losing battle long-term.
I read a ChatGPT summary yesterday instead of clicking the link. My bad, but the habit is real.
Newsday suing OpenAI is wild. I never thought I would see a newspaper take on Silicon Valley like this.