The Seattle Times Co. and Newsday filed a federal copyright and trademark lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI on September 4, 2026. The plaintiffs filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The suit alleges the companies used published journalism to train generative AI products without permission or compensation.
The newspapers claim AI models reproduce content verbatim to create substitutive products. These products allegedly threaten the business models of the news organizations. A Microsoft spokesperson stated the company was surprised by the lawsuit and is open to exploring solutions. This case follows a trend of legal actions regarding the use of copyrighted work in large language models.