400 Newspapers Sue Microsoft and OpenAI, Alleging Content Theft

A coalition of publishers of nearly 400 local and regional newspapers has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement.

The lawsuit alleges that the companies stole the newspapers’ copyrighted news articles, used that content to build and train commercial AI products, including ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, and reproduced or repurposed the content without permission or compensation, Platkin LLP, the law firm that filed the suit, said in a Wednesday (June 24) post on LinkedIn.

Platkin LLP was founded this year by former New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin and a team of litigators from the attorney general’s office, according to the firm’s LinkedIn profile.

Matthew Platkin said in the post that the lawsuit “seeks to ensure these local publications creating original content will have meaningful protections in the AI era.”

“AI systems do not critically evaluate city council and community meetings,” Platkin said. “They don’t investigate local crimes and corruption, publish obituaries, or cover the new restaurant opening downtown. Local reporters do. This lawsuit is not about stopping AI innovation, but ensuring that innovation happens fairly and within the bounds of the law.”

Neither Microsoft nor OpenAI immediately replied to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

The New York Times filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI in December 2023, alleging copyright infringement. The newspaper claimed the tech companies used its content without permission to develop their AI products.

Reached by PYMNTS at the time, an OpenAI spokesperson said the firm respects the right of content creators and owners and is “committed to working with them to ensure they benefit from AI technology and new revenue models.”

In December, a federal judge directed OpenAI to provide millions of anonymized ChatGPT logs in a copyright case brought by The New York Times and other media organizations. The publishers contended that the logs were necessary to determine whether the AI system reproduced protected articles.

OpenAI and Microsoft also face a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by a group of authors who accuse the companies of misusing the authors’ books to train AI software, while OpenAI faces a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Encyclopedia Britannica and its subsidiary Merriam-Webster, who allege the company scraped their articles to train its AI.