American Newspapers Take Legal Action Against OpenAI and Microsoft Due to AI Chatbots

Eight US newspapers filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft in a New York federal court on Tuesday, alleging copyright infringement in training the technology behind ChatGPT and Copilot chatbots.

The newspapers, including The New York Daily News and The Chicago Tribune, are owned by Alden Global Capital, a Florida-based hedge fund that became the second-largest US newspaper group after acquiring the Tribune publishing chain in 2021.

According to the filing, the lawsuit accuses the defendants of using millions of copyrighted articles without permission or payment to develop their generative artificial intelligence products.

The lawsuit asserts that OpenAI and Microsoft used verbatim excerpts of full articles and attributed misleading or inaccurate reporting to the publications in certain requests.

Other newspapers involved in the suit are The Orlando Sentinel, The Sun Sentinel of Florida, The San Jose Mercury News, The Denver Post, The Orange County Register, and The St. Paul Pioneer Press.

OpenAI responded with a statement emphasizing their support for news organizations but did not address the specific accusations. They highlighted their partnerships with various news outlets worldwide, including The Associated Press, Financial Times, Axel Springer of Germany, Le Monde of France, and Prisa Media of Spain.

This legal action closely resembles a previous case filed by The New York Times in December, where OpenAI was also accused of content theft. OpenAI argued that using publicly available data, including news articles, for general training purposes constitutes fair use and accused The New York Times of violating ChatGPT’s user guidelines to generate content favoring their case.

Microsoft declined to comment on the lawsuit.