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
Microsoft was sued Friday by the parent company of its hometown daily newspaper, The Seattle Times Co., which joined with Newsday …
Context & Ripple Effects
The dispute extends the publisher copyright fight that began with The New York Times’ 2023 case against OpenAI and Microsoft and broadened when Alden-owned daily newspapers filed their own suit in 2024. Seattle Times’ participation is particularly consequential because Microsoft and OpenAI are confirmed funders of the publisher, putting a commercial relationship alongside an adversarial legal claim.
First-order effects
- OpenAI and Microsoft must defend another publisher-led claim over the use of journalism in AI training, while Seattle Times and Newsday formally seek to enforce their asserted copyright interests.
- The Seattle Times’ suit creates immediate tension between the publisher and two of its funders, separating its litigation posture from that financial relationship.
Second-order effects
- Arguments developed across the New York Times, Alden, Seattle Times, and Newsday cases gain relevance for more publishers weighing whether copyright litigation is a viable route to control AI use of their archives.
- OpenAI and Microsoft face a more concentrated legal challenge from news organizations, raising the strategic importance of consistent positions on training-data use across cases.
Third-order effects
- If publishers continue to pursue coordinated copyright claims, court decisions may make copyright a stronger control point over how AI developers obtain and commercialize news content.
- The pattern shifts the AI-content market toward a legal contest over whether access to published material confers training rights, rather than leaving that boundary to developer practice alone.
The trend: News publishers are using copyright litigation to press AI developers for greater control over the terms on which journalism can be used in model training.