Two more names have been added to the list of plaintiffs suing OpenAI and Microsoft: The Seattle Times and Newsday have filed lawsuits alleging that the two companies used their journalism to train AI without permission. The list began with The New York Times in late 2023 and continues to lengthen while the original lawsuit is still underway.
Forceful Language in the Lawsuit
The complaint argues that with the emergence of generative AI, the journalism industry could become “fundamentally broken.” The authors of the lawsuit describe generative AI as “a snake eating its own tail” that could “destroy the very institutions” creating the content on which it was trained.
An excerpt worth reading verbatim:
AI products such as ChatGPT and Copilot are marketed as “content producers, but they are in fact voracious consumers, devouring human-authored content and returning to the world knockoffs and derivative imitations of the very original content they consumed” to achieve commercial goals.
In other words, the legal argument does not merely stop at “you used our property,” but goes further: the AI business model is being nourished by the very news sources with which it competes.
Notably: The Defendants Were Once Sponsors
A detail that sets this case apart from previous lawsuits: Microsoft and OpenAI had previously sponsored several journalism projects and fellowships at The Seattle Times itself. Turning from a partnership to a courtroom showdown, this marks the first time that has occurred in this wave of litigation.
Microsoft’s response was also rather gentle given the nature of the lawsuit. A company spokesperson told GeekWire that the firm was “surprised by the lawsuit” but “always willing to sit down and find solutions to this type of dispute.”
There is not yet any response from the court, and it remains unclear whether this case will be consolidated into the broader lawsuit involving multiple newspapers or proceed separately. But for content creators, this case demonstrates that traditional journalism has shifted from apprehension to concrete legal action. How the courts rule over the next few years will shape the value of human content in the age of AI.