Two major newspapers are taking legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming the companies used their published articles to train artificial intelligence models without consent or compensation. The Seattle Times Co. and Newsday filed a federal copyright and trademark complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on September 4, 2026, alleging that the tech companies' AI systems ingest journalism and reproduce it verbatim without paying the news organizations or asking permission.

What Are the Newspapers Accusing the Tech Companies Of?

The 38-page complaint makes several specific allegations about how OpenAI and Microsoft have allegedly harmed the news industry. According to the lawsuit, the companies' AI models violate copyright by ingesting journalism and reproducing it, often word-for-word, without any compensation to the publishers. The complaint also accuses OpenAI of trademark dilution by generating fabricated content falsely attributed to The Seattle Times and Newsday.

The newspapers argue that generative AI trained on "painstakingly researched, expensive-to-produce content threatens to destroy the very news organizations by competing directly with them through AI-generated substitutive content." They emphasize there is "no justification for Defendants' wholesale taking and use of Plaintiffs' content without payment or permission".

The financial impact on publishers appears significant. Attorneys for the newspapers cited industry data showing that search referral traffic to midsize publishers declined by 47 percent year over year in December 2025, suggesting that AI systems may be redirecting readers away from news websites.

What Relief Are the Newspapers Seeking?

The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of damages and court orders for what the complaint describes as the "impoundment and/or destruction" of datasets and AI models that include the outlets' articles. In other words, the newspapers want the court to force the companies to destroy all AI training sets that used their published work.

This is not the first major legal challenge to AI companies over training data. The New York Times filed a similar lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, accusing them of using its stories to develop AI models. The companies have argued in that litigation that their technology trains on copyrighted work and generates new material in a manner permitted under copyright law's fair use doctrine.

How Are the Companies Responding?

Both tech companies have pushed back against the allegations. A Microsoft spokesperson said the company was surprised by the lawsuit and expressed appreciation for The Seattle Times' importance to its region, adding that Microsoft is "always happy to sit down and explore solutions to this type of dispute".

OpenAI took a different approach, stating that its models are trained on publicly available data and grounded in fair use principles. The company added that this approach "helps hundreds of millions of people improve their daily lives and delivers benefits such as empowering human creativity, science, and medical research".

What's the Broader Legal and Political Context?

The Seattle Times and Newsday lawsuit arrives amid a growing wave of legal challenges from the publishing industry. Daily newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital sued OpenAI in 2024, and a group of 35 publishers representing more than 400 community newspapers sued in 2025. Additionally, Anthropic, an AI company that competes with OpenAI, reached a $1.5 billion settlement last year with authors and publishers who accused it of using copyrighted books to train its Claude models.

Interestingly, the U.S. Justice Department has sided with the tech companies in the ongoing New York Times litigation. On September 1, 2026, the Justice Department filed a statement arguing that AI development is a matter of national interest and that a finding of copyright violation would stifle scientific progress while hindering American prosperity and economic mobility. The filing also stated that "the creative possibilities and potential benefits of AI models far outweigh any competitive harm from training on publishers' content".

How Are the Newspapers Justifying Their Legal Action?

Both news organizations have emphasized that they support responsible AI innovation, but believe their significant investments in journalism must be protected. Seattle Times President and CEO Alan Fisco announced the suit in an email to employees on September 4, 2026, calling it "not an easy decision." He explained that the company must defend its content, which it spends millions of dollars a year to produce, from being used without consent or compensation. Fisco stressed that the lawsuit was "not about impeding AI innovation" but about ensuring that innovation does not come at the expense of the newspaper's business model.

Alan Fisco

"While both Newsday and The Seattle Times support responsible AI innovation, it is imperative to protect the significant investments the organizations have made in their content," stated Newsday spokesperson Tara Rogers.

Tara Rogers, Newsday Spokesperson

Steps Publishers Are Taking to Protect Their Content

• Legal Action: Filing federal lawsuits seeking damages and destruction of AI training datasets that include their published articles without permission or compensation.
• Transparency About AI Use: The Seattle Times disclosed that it does not use AI to generate stories, and it has been transparent about its relationships with tech companies, including Microsoft Philanthropies funding for some journalism projects.
• Industry Coordination: Multiple publishers are joining forces through coordinated legal challenges, with groups representing hundreds of community newspapers filing suits alongside major outlets.

The Seattle Times also disclosed a potential conflict of interest worth noting: Microsoft Philanthropies underwrites some of its journalism projects, and the newspaper received a grant from The Lenfest Institute for Journalism for an AI fellowship program funded with $10 million from Microsoft and OpenAI. Despite these financial relationships, the newspaper proceeded with the lawsuit.

The outcome of this case could have far-reaching implications for how AI companies train their models and whether they must negotiate licensing agreements with publishers. As the legal battle unfolds, it will test whether copyright law's fair use doctrine, which tech companies rely on, can withstand challenges from major media organizations fighting to protect their business models in the age of generative AI.