Two newspapers ask a judge to destroy AI training sets that contain their work
The Seattle Times and Newsday sued OpenAI and Microsoft in federal court in Manhattan on Friday. The complaint says the companies scraped newspaper sites, including paywalled articles. It says they used the work to train and operate ChatGPT, Copilot and Bing AI products. The papers say those products can reproduce or closely paraphrase their reporting. They want damages and an order to destroy copies, training sets or models that contain their work.
Verified 2:34 AM PDT · 3 original sources
The evidence
What the reporting establishes
What happened
The Seattle Times and Newsday sued OpenAI and Microsoft in federal court in Manhattan on Friday. The complaint says the companies scraped newspaper sites, including paywalled articles. It says they used the work to train and operate ChatGPT, Copilot and Bing AI products. The papers say those products can reproduce or closely paraphrase their reporting. They want damages and an order to destroy copies, training sets or models that contain their work.
Pressure point
These are allegations at the start of a case. OpenAI said its training on public data is protected by fair use. Microsoft said it was surprised by the suit and wanted to discuss a solution. The destruction request is broad, but the court has not ruled that any training or output infringed copyright.
What to watch
The case may join the publisher cases already before the same federal court. Discovery could show what data entered the models and whether the papers can trace specific outputs to specific copies. An order to destroy training material or models would reach far beyond these two publishers.
Audit the story
Original sources
Company claims remain company claims. Follow the reporting and judge the evidence directly.
- U.S. District Court filing via CourtListenerSeattle Times and Newsday complaint against OpenAI and Microsoft ↗
- ReutersSeattle Times, Newsday sue OpenAI, Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement ↗
- GeekWireSeattle Times sues Microsoft and OpenAI over AI training ↗
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