The Seattle Times and Newsday have filed a joint lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing the companies of using their copyrighted news articles without permission to train generative AI models. Filed on Friday, the suit describes the practice as "a snake eating its own tail," arguing that it undermines the very journalism the AI systems rely on, and joins a growing wave of legal action from news publishers against AI firms.

The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI and Microsoft "methodically scraped" articles in ways that bypass paywalls, damaging the publishers' business models by offering readers an AI-generated substitute that reduces website traffic and advertising revenue. It also claims the AI models produce hallucinations that falsely attribute information to the two outlets and strip out copyright management data. The case follows a precedent set by the New York Times in 2023 and a more recent suit from CNN against Perplexity, though some outlets, including AP and Vox Media, have instead struck licensing partnerships with OpenAI.