The Seattle Times and Newsday sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. They filed the complaint in the federal district court in Manhattan on 4 September 2026. The publishers say the companies scraped their articles and bypassed paywalls. They allege the articles were used to train and ground the models behind ChatGPT and Copilot. They also claim copyright notices, bylines and headlines were stripped from the text. A further claim says the products repeat their articles word for word when prompted. The suit adds trademark dilution claims under federal, Washington and New York law. The publishers reject the argument that training on news is fair use. They seek damages and a court order stopping the practice. Similar suits by other publishers are already consolidated before the same court.
What changed
OpenAI and Microsoft already faced consolidated news-publisher copyright suits in the same court, without these two plaintiffs.
- 30 Pulitzer Prizes between the two
- Newsday: 51M monthly page views
- Seattle Times: ~208,000 subscribers
- Filed 4 September 2026, S.D.N.Y.
Sources