Seattle Times and Newsday Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over Copyright

The Seattle Times and Newsday filed a federal lawsuit on Friday accusing OpenAI and Microsoft of unauthorized use of their published work to train large language models [1]. The legal challenge marks a significant escalation in the ongoing conflict between media organizations and AI developers over the commercial use of copyrighted content and its impact on publisher revenue [1].

The core of the dispute

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges that OpenAI’s models cause substantial harm to media businesses by training on proprietary journalism without consent or compensation [1]. Attorneys for the publishers cited industry data showing that search referral traffic to midsize news organizations fell by 47% year over year in December 2025 [1]. Beyond training concerns, the plaintiffs claim OpenAI diluted their trademarks by generating fabricated content that falsely attributed stories to the Seattle Times and Newsday [1].

OpenAI maintains that its models are trained on publicly available data under the "fair use" doctrine, which it argues benefits society by supporting creativity and research [1]. Microsoft, which has invested billions into OpenAI since 2019, stated it is open to discussing solutions to the dispute [1]. The tech companies have found support from the U.S. Justice Department, which argued in a recent filing that AI development is a matter of national interest and that the potential benefits of the technology outweigh competitive harms to publishers [1].

Industry and legal context

This case mirrors a 2023 lawsuit filed by The New York Times and joins a growing list of legal actions from authors, musicians, and other newspaper groups, including a coalition of 35 publishers representing over 400 community newspapers [1]. While some organizations have pursued litigation, others have sought different paths; for instance, Anthropic reached a $1.5 billion settlement with a group of authors and publishers last year regarding the use of copyrighted books in its Claude models [1].

The Seattle Times’ involvement is nuanced, as the organization has received funding from Microsoft and OpenAI to support AI-related journalism fellowships and uses ChatGPT licenses for internal data analysis [1]. However, the outlet maintains that its newsroom does not use AI to generate stories and requires rigorous risk evaluations for any AI tools used in its operations [1].

What to watch

• Court Rulings: Monitor whether the court accepts the "fair use" defense from OpenAI and Microsoft, particularly in light of the Justice Department’s recent filing favoring AI development.
• Discovery Process: Watch for the release of specific internal data regarding the datasets used to train models like ChatGPT and Copilot, which the plaintiffs are seeking to have destroyed [1].
• Settlement Trends: Observe if other publishers follow the path of the Anthropic settlement or if the industry remains committed to protracted litigation to establish legal precedents for AI training.

The outcome of this case will likely determine whether publishers can successfully force AI companies to pay for the data used to build generative models, a decision that could fundamentally alter the economic relationship between the tech and media sectors.