Why OpenAI, Microsoft have been sued by Seattle Times, Newsday
What's the story
The Seattle Times and Newsday have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement. The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. It accuses both tech giants of scraping content from their websites, including paywalled material, to train their AI systems. The newspapers claim that their journalism was used without permission or compensation to develop products like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Bing's AI features.
Allegations
AI products can reproduce articles, claims suit
The newspapers allege that the AI products of OpenAI and Microsoft can reproduce passages from their reporting, closely paraphrase articles, and provide answers to users that lessen the need to visit their websites or buy subscriptions.
"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," Alan Fisco, President and CEO of Seattle Times, said.
Responses
OpenAI and Microsoft respond to lawsuit
Responding to the lawsuit, an OpenAI spokesperson said its models are trained on publicly available data and grounded in fair use.
However, they did not comment specifically on this case.
A Microsoft spokesperson expressed surprise at the lawsuit but acknowledged the importance of local journalism.
They said, "While we're surprised by the lawsuit, we appreciate the importance of local journalism and we're always happy to sit down and explore solutions to this type of dispute."
Legal demands
Newspapers seeking court order to destroy copies of their works
The Seattle Times and Newsday are seeking a court order to destroy copies of their works as well as any training datasets or AI models that incorporate them.
The lawsuit is similar to one filed by the New York Times in 2023 against OpenAI and Microsoft.
That case accused the companies of using millions of newspaper articles without permission to train OpenAI's popular chatbot.