Seattle Times and Newsday Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over Copyright Infringement

6 Sept 2026, 4:19 am · 6d ago · 1 min read · TechCrunch AI

News publications The Seattle Times and Newsday have filed federal lawsuits against OpenAI and its major backer Microsoft. The publishers allege that both technology giants unlawfully scraped and utilized their copyrighted journalistic content without authorization or compensation to train proprietary artificial intelligence systems, including the large language models behind ChatGPT. This legal action adds to a growing wave of copyright infringement lawsuits from media organizations, authors, and news outlets worldwide, intensifying legal scrutiny over whether using copyrighted editorial material to build commercial AI applications constitutes fair use or demands structured commercial licensing pacts.