{
  "id": 5839097,
  "title": "The Seattle Times and Newsday sue OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging the companies trained AI on their journalism; Microsoft and OpenAI are funders of Seattle Times (Todd Bishop/GeekWire)",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/05/the-seattle-times-and-newsday-sue-openai-and-microsoft-alleging-the",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-09-05T20:50:47.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Techmeme",
    "slug": "techmeme",
    "url": "https://www.geekwire.com/2026/seattle-times-sues-microsoft-and-openai-alleging-they-trained-their-ai-on-its-journalism/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": null,
  "summary": "The Seattle Times and Newsday have sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the companies used their journalism to train AI systems without permission. According to the lawsuit, OpenAI and Microsoft scraped the newspapers' websites, including content behind paywalls, to create datasets for products like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.\n\nThe newspapers claim that the AI products can reproduce passages from their reporting, paraphrase articles, and provide users with answers that reduce the need to visit their websites or buy subscriptions. The Seattle Times President and CEO, Alan Fisco, stated that the company must defend its content, which costs millions of dollars to produce, from being used without consent or compensation.\n\nA spokesperson for OpenAI said its models are trained on publicly available data and grounded in fair use. A Microsoft spokesperson said the company appreciates the importance of local journalism, but was surprised by the lawsuit.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 6,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "CNA - Business",
        "title": "Seattle Times, Newsday sue OpenAI, Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/05/seattle-times-newsday-sue-openai-microsoft-alleging-copyright",
        "published": "2026-09-05T03:00:10.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "Investing.com",
        "title": "Seattle Times, Newsday sue OpenAI, Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/05/seattle-times-newsday-sue-openai-microsoft-alleging-copyright-5702661",
        "published": "2026-09-05T03:06:35.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "Economic Times Tech",
        "title": "Seattle Times, Newsday sue OpenAI, Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/05/seattle-times-newsday-sue-openai-microsoft-alleging-copyright-5731147",
        "published": "2026-09-05T05:54:23.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "Dawn",
        "title": "Seattle Times, Newsday sue OpenAI and Microsoft; allege copyright infringement",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/05/seattle-times-newsday-sue-openai-and-microsoft-allege-copyright",
        "published": "2026-09-05T08:11:19.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "TechCrunch",
        "title": "Seattle Times and Newsday are the latest publications to sue OpenAI and Microsoft",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/05/seattle-times-and-newsday-are-the-latest-publications-to-sue-openai",
        "published": "2026-09-05T22:49:55.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}