Seattle Times and Newsday sue OpenAI and Microsoft over alleged training-data use

The Seattle Times and Newsday have sued OpenAI and Microsoft over the alleged use of their journalism in AI training. The case adds two more publishers to the widening legal fight over whether model developers can use news reporting without a licence — and what should happen when generated answers reproduce passages from that reporting.

What’s actually going on

The report says that the publishers allege their journalism was used as AI training data without permission and that model responses reproduce passages from their reporting. Microsoft is named because Copilot uses OpenAI technology. The publishers are seeking the destruction of copies of their works, training datasets and AI models incorporating those works. The report says neither company had responded immediately at publication time, and The Verge notes the publishers join nearly 400 local newspapers that recently sued the companies — a reported figure that remains unverified. Liability has not been determined.

Why you should care

The dispute matters because publishers are challenging whether AI companies can absorb journalism, answer questions from it and compete with the original reporting without paying for access. The outcome could shape how news organisations and AI platforms coexist — or don’t.

Our opinion

Publishers have every right to test this in court, but it is a consequential lawsuit, not a judgement. The claims deserve scrutiny under copyright law, and the remedies sought are unusually drastic, so neither side has earned a victory lap from the filing alone. Watch how the courts distinguish training, copying and market harm before assuming the case settles the wider argument about AI and journalism. For readers, the important point is uncertainty: this dispute could shape licensing expectations, but it cannot yet tell us where the legal line will land.