Publishers Sue OpenAI as DOJ Backs AI Training

The Seattle Times and Newsday sued OpenAI and Microsoft in federal court, alleging the companies used their journalism—including paywalled articles—to train ChatGPT, Copilot and Bing AI without permission or compensation. The publishers say the systems can reproduce or closely paraphrase their reporting, remove copyright information, generate false statements attributed to the outlets and reduce subscriptions, traffic and advertising revenue; they are seeking remedies that could include destruction of copied material and models or datasets containing it. OpenAI has defended its use of publicly available material as fair use, while Microsoft has expressed surprise and openness to discussions; the companies face similar suits from The New York Times and other publishers. The Trump-era Justice Department has urged a Manhattan court to find that training AI on copyrighted works is transformative fair use, arguing restrictions could harm U.S. innovation, national security and competitiveness. News organizations criticize that position, while others—including The Associated Press and Vox Media—have licensed content to OpenAI.