The legal battle over who should be paid when artificial intelligence consumes journalism is spreading beyond national media groups, with two regional U.S. newspapers taking OpenAI and Microsoft to court.
The Seattle Times and Long Island-based Newsday filed a copyright lawsuit against the technology companies in federal court in Manhattan, Reuters reported on Sept. 5. The publishers contend that their journalism became an input for commercial AI systems without their authorization or compensation.
The case adds another front to a broader dispute over the economics of generative AI. News organizations spend money gathering and editing information, while developers need enormous amounts of text to make AI models useful. Publishers increasingly argue that allowing those systems to ingest journalism — and subsequently answer questions about the same subjects — risks weakening the subscription and advertising businesses that finance the original reporting.
According to Reuters, the two newspapers say the disputed material extends to journalism kept behind subscription barriers. Their allegations concern technology associated with OpenAI’s ChatGPT as well as Microsoft’s Copilot and Bing offerings.
The publishers’ concern isn’t limited to how AI models were initially developed. They also allege that AI products can provide users with material derived from their articles, potentially reducing the need to visit the newspapers’ own websites, Reuters reported.
That argument puts the lawsuit at the intersection of copyright law and a rapidly changing online information market. Publishers historically relied on search engines and other intermediaries to direct readers toward their sites. Generative AI can instead produce an answer within the technology company’s own interface, creating a dispute over how much value flows back to the organization that gathered the underlying information.
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The Seattle Times has framed the issue as one involving the cost of producing original journalism. Chief Executive Officer Alan Fisco told employees that the newspaper invests millions of dollars each year in its reporting and needs to defend that investment from uncompensated use, according to Reuters.
OpenAI disputes the broader legal premise underlying such claims. Reuters reported that a company spokesperson said its models are developed using publicly available information and that the practice is supported by fair-use principles. The company did not specifically address the newspapers’ individual allegations in its response cited by Reuters.
Microsoft struck a different note. The company said it was surprised by the lawsuit, while acknowledging the importance of local journalism and indicating that it was open to discussing possible ways to resolve the disagreement, according to Reuters.
The publishers are seeking remedies that could reach beyond monetary compensation. Reuters reported that their requested relief includes destruction of copies of copyrighted material and certain datasets or models containing their work.
The implications could therefore extend beyond two newspapers if courts ultimately accept expansive claims over material incorporated into AI development. The technology industry has invested heavily in increasingly capable models whose performance depends in part on access to large collections of human-created material. Publishers, meanwhile, are trying to establish that commercial AI development doesn’t automatically give technology companies a right to use copyrighted journalism without a license.
The question is already being tested elsewhere. The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023 over alleged unauthorized use of its journalism, a case that remains pending, Reuters reported. Copyright owners have also pursued claims involving other AI developers, including Anthropic and Meta Platforms.
The arrival of The Seattle Times and Newsday in that fight is notable because it illustrates how the conflict is moving deeper into the regional news business. For local publishers, the debate isn’t simply about ownership of archives.
Source: Reuters
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