Seattle Times and Newsday Sue OpenAI, Microsoft Over AI Training Use
Seattle Times and Newsday sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement on Sept. 4, 2026.
Why it matters: AI companies' use of copyrighted journalistic content affects intellectual property law and AI regulation. Legal professionals must monitor these unfolding lawsuits to understand liability and compliance risks for legal tech providers.
- Lawsuit filed Sept. 4, 2026, in U.S. District Court for Southern District of New York.
- Claims OpenAI and Microsoft scraped paywalled articles to train ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Bing AI.
- Plaintiffs allege AI reproduces or closely paraphrases their reporting, reducing website visits and subscriptions.
- Seeking damages and court order to destroy infringing datasets and models.
- Similar lawsuit by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft filed in 2023 is ongoing.
- U.S. Department of Justice supports OpenAI's fair use defense as of Sept. 2, 2026.
On September 4, 2026, The Seattle Times and Newsday filed a federal lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft alleging unauthorized use of their journalistic content for AI training. Filed in the Southern District of New York, the suit claims that these companies scraped articles from their websites—including content behind paywalls—to create datasets for AI products such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Bing AI.
The lawsuit asserts that these AI products can reproduce passages verbatim or narrowly paraphrase the newspapers' reporting. One example cited describes an AI model reproducing 88 consecutive words from a Seattle Times article after receiving its headline and URL, illustrating the direct copying issue.
These practices allegedly reduce user traffic to the plaintiffs' websites and harm their subscription revenues, intensifying concerns for news publishers who invest millions annually in producing original content—as noted by Alan Fisco, CEO of The Seattle Times, who emphasized defending their content from unauthorized use without consent or compensation.
The complaint includes claims of direct and vicarious copyright infringement, violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and trademark dilution. The plaintiffs seek damages and an injunction requiring the destruction of all pirated content within AI training datasets and models.
This lawsuit follows a similar ongoing case filed in 2023 by The New York Times against the same defendants for comparable copyright violations. Adding complexity, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a brief on September 2, 2026, backing OpenAI’s argument that training AI systems on publicly available content falls under the fair use doctrine, generating a contentious legal debate about how copyright law applies to AI training.
Microsoft responded stating its willingness to discuss solutions despite being surprised by the lawsuit. OpenAI also defended its training practices, highlighting benefits such as advancing creativity, science, and medical research.
As these cases evolve, legal professionals should closely watch how courts balance AI innovation against intellectual property protections, which will shape obligations and risks for corporations and law firms using or developing AI-driven legal technologies.
By the numbers:
- September 4, 2026 — Seattle Times and Newsday filed the lawsuit.
- 88 words — length of reproduced Seattle Times excerpt by AI model.
- 47% — year-over-year decline in referral traffic for mid-sized publishers as of December 2025.
Yes, but: The U.S. Department of Justice's support for OpenAI's fair use defense complicates the plaintiffs' claims and could influence the final rulings.
What's next: The ongoing New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft will provide further legal context, and courts will soon address the Seattle Times and Newsday case's motions and discovery phases.