The Seattle Times and Newsday have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that their journalism was used without permission to train AI models and is often reproduced in chatbot responses to user queries. The case adds to a growing wave of litigation against OpenAI from publishers and reference providers, including The New York Times, Ziff Davis, Merriam-Webster and Encyclopedia Britannica, and reflects mounting industry concern that AI chatbots are undermining the commercial value of original reporting.

Microsoft was named alongside OpenAI because its Copilot assistant is built on OpenAI's underlying technology. The two newspapers join a wave of almost 400 local US papers that have recently sued the companies, arguing that AI-generated answers reduce the need for readers to visit their websites, cutting into subscription revenue. The Seattle Times and Newsday are seeking the destruction of any copies of their work held by the firms, along with related training datasets and AI models built using it. OpenAI and Microsoft had not responded to requests for comment at the time of reporting.