In Summary. Published:. 3:49 PM PDT · September 5, 2026. Two additional news organizations are taking legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft due to the alleged utilization of their journalistic content for AI training. According to a lawsuit submitted by The Seattle Times and Newsday, the emergence of AI may cause the field of journalism to be “irreparably damaged.” The lawsuit characterizes generative AI as a self-consuming process that may potentially ‘destroy the organizations’ generating the content it was trained on. It argues that AI products like ChatGPT and CoPilot, although marketed as content creators, are actually voracious consumers, ingesting human-written content and returning replicas and derivative imitations to serve their commercial goals. This viewpoint was part of a lawsuit filed by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, which gained traction and spurred similar legal actions from other publications. The Seattle Times’ legal action is noteworthy as Microsoft and OpenAI have supported the newspaper’s journalistic endeavors and fellowship programs. A Microsoft representative expressed astonishment at the lawsuit to GeekWire, yet remains eager to discuss resolutions for such issues.
Seattle Times and Newsday are the latest publications to sue OpenAI and Microsoft
- by stefan