Seattle Times and Newsday sue OpenAI and Microsoft for infringement

Details

The Seattle Times and Newsday filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft on September 6, 2026, alleging their journalism was used to train AI models without permission. The publishers claim AI systems frequently reproduce passages from their articles verbatim in response to user queries — directly competing with their own editorial product. Microsoft is named as co-defendant because Copilot is built on OpenAI technology. The two outlets join nearly 400 local newspapers that recently filed similar suits, and follow prior plaintiffs including The New York Times, Ziff Davis, Merriam-Webster, and Encyclopedia Britannica. Publishers cite two distinct harms: reproduction of content in AI outputs, and lost subscription revenue as chatbots reduce readers' incentive to visit news sites. The lawsuit seeks the destruction of any copies of the publishers' works held by the defendants, including training datasets and AI models incorporating them — a remedy courts have not yet awarded in any comparable case. Neither OpenAI nor Microsoft had commented at time of publication. With nearly 400 newspapers now in coordinated litigation, this represents a meaningful escalation in the legal campaign over AI training data practices, raising the stakes for how courts will define fair use in this context.