The Seattle Times and Newsday sued OpenAI and Microsoft in federal court in Manhattan, alleging ChatGPT and Copilot were trained on their journalism without permission. The complaint calls generative AI “a snake eating its own tail,” arguing the products are marketed as producers of content when they’re really consumers that hand back reproductions and imitations of what they took in, and it warns the news industry could end up broken beyond repair. Microsoft and OpenAI have both funded journalism projects and fellowships at the Seattle Times, and a Microsoft spokesperson told GeekWire it was surprised by the filing but would sit down and look for a resolution. The case follows the New York Times suit against the same two companies in 2023 and the string of publisher claims filed since.
