Seattle Times and Newsday Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over Training Data — Despite Microsoft Funding the Times
Published · updated · curated by AI Is Going Just Great
Source: techcrunch.com ↗
AI products like ChatGPT and CoPilot are touted as producers of content, but in fact they are rapacious consumers, devouring human-authored content and delivering back to the world copies and derivative imitations.
The Seattle Times and Newsday filed suit against OpenAI and Microsoft on September 5, alleging the companies used their journalism to train AI models without authorization. The complaint frames generative AI as "a snake eating its own tail" that risks destroying the same news organizations whose reporting feeds the models.
The Seattle Times case carries a particular wrinkle: Microsoft and OpenAI have both funded journalism projects and fellowships at the paper. Microsoft, for its part, told GeekWire it was "surprised by the lawsuit." The suit joins a growing pile that began when The New York Times filed against OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023.