**US Newspapers Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over Alleged Copyright Infringement**
In a significant legal development, The Seattle Times and Newsday have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, claiming that the tech giants unlawfully copied their journalistic content to train artificial intelligence systems. The lawsuit, initiated on Friday, accuses the companies of scraping content from the newspapers’ websites, including material that is protected behind paywalls.
The plaintiffs argue that the AI products developed by OpenAI and Microsoft, including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Bing's AI features, have the capability to reproduce passages from their articles, closely paraphrase their reporting, and provide users with information that diminishes the necessity to visit the newspapers' websites or purchase subscriptions. This practice, they contend, undermines their business model and the substantial investment they make in producing quality journalism.
Alan Fisco, President and CEO of The Seattle Times, expressed the newspaper's commitment to protecting its content. In a communication to employees, he stated, "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."
In response to the lawsuit, a spokesperson for OpenAI indicated that their models are trained on data that is publicly available and asserted that their practices fall under the principles of fair use. However, the spokesperson did not address the specifics of the lawsuit directly. Meanwhile, Microsoft expressed surprise at the legal action but acknowledged the importance of local journalism, stating they are open to discussions aimed at resolving the dispute.
The Seattle Times and Newsday are seeking a court order that would require the destruction of any copies of their works that have been incorporated into the training datasets or AI models of OpenAI and Microsoft. This lawsuit is part of a broader trend, as it follows a similar case filed by The New York Times earlier in 2023, which accused the two tech companies of using millions of articles without authorization to train OpenAI’s chatbot. That case remains ongoing and is among several lawsuits brought by copyright holders against various tech companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta, for alleged misuse of their intellectual property in the development of AI systems.
As the legal landscape surrounding AI and copyright continues to evolve, this lawsuit highlights the increasing tensions between traditional media organizations and technology companies that leverage their content for AI training. The outcome of this case could have significant implications for the future of content usage in AI development and the protection of journalistic integrity.