Two more American news organizations have joined the lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. The Seattle Times, together with Newsday, allege that the two companies used their news content without authorization to train AI models, claiming that such practices are undermining the very foundation upon which news organizations rely for their survival.
Two media outlets file new lawsuits
According to the complaint documents, the plaintiff believes that generative AI products absorb human-created content on one hand, and then output similar text to users on the other, which directly threatens the content value and business model of news organizations. The lawsuit alleges that if this pattern continues to expand, the news industry may suffer irreparable damage.
The plaintiff also described the generative model AI as a “snake that swallows its own tail,” meaning that the model relies on news content for training, but may in turn weaken content producers. The document states that products like ChatGPT and Copilot are packaged as content production tools, but are essentially highly dependent on existing human-written works.
Continued copyright disputes between the media and AI company
This case continues the escalating copyright disputes between American media and AI company. As early as 2023, The New York Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, on allegations of copyright infringement. Since then, more publishing institutions have followed suit, taking legal action regarding training data licensing, boundaries of content usage, and commercial returns.
As the number of cases increases, the focus from the outside world is no longer just on whether individual pieces of content are being used, but rather on whether a clear authorization and compensation mechanism should be established for the training of the AI model. Media organizations are generally concerned that if platforms can scrape news content on a large scale and generate alternative texts, the return on investment for original reporting will continue to be compressed.
The Seattle Times has a partnership with Microsoft.
The reason why this lawsuit by The Seattle Times has received more attention is also that the organization has previously received funding from Microsoft and OpenAI for certain news projects and scholarship programs. This means that there was not a complete lack of cooperation between the two parties, yet now they have gone to court over the issue of content usage in AI.
A Microsoft spokesperson stated regarding GeekWire, that the company is surprised by this lawsuit, but is also willing to sit down and discuss solutions to such disputes. Currently, the legal pressures faced by OpenAI and Microsoft continue to increase, and the conflicts between the media industry and AI companies over content, licensing, and revenue distribution are also intensifying.
