The Seattle Times and Newsday sue OpenAI and Microsoft

The list of publications suing OpenAI and Microsoft over training neural networks on copyrighted content has grown by two new members. The Seattle Times and Newsday have filed a joint suit accusing the companies of unlawfully using their journalism.

“A snake eating its own tail”

The authors of the suit paint a bleak picture of the industry's future: with the arrival of AI, journalism risks ending up “broken beyond repair.” They compare generative AI to “a snake eating its own tail” — a technology capable of “destroying the very organizations” that produce the content it trains on.

The wording in the document is pointedly sharp. According to the plaintiffs, products like ChatGPT and Copilot are presented as content creators, but in reality they are its “insatiable consumers”: they “devour what people have written” and return to the world “copies and derivative imitations” of the very original material they consumed for commercial gain.

An awkward wrinkle

What makes the situation especially piquant is that Microsoft and OpenAI had previously funded some of The Seattle Times' journalism projects and fellowship programs. Now the publication that once received support from these companies is suing them.

A Microsoft representative told GeekWire that the company was “surprised by the suit,” but “always remains ready to sit down at the negotiating table and look for a resolution to disputes like this.”

Part of a bigger wave

The new suit continues a line that began back in 2023, when The New York Times accused OpenAI and its investor-partner Microsoft of copyright infringement. As that case developed, more and more publications joined it, and now The Seattle Times and Newsday have been added to their number.

Source: TechCrunch