Eight prominent American newspapers have taken legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing them of using copyrighted articles without permission to train AI models like ChatGPT. The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, alleges that these companies unlawfully utilized material from the newspapers to develop their artificial intelligence technologies.

The newspapers involved in the lawsuit are The New York Daily News, The Chicago Tribune, 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. These newspapers, managed by the MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing subsidiaries of Alden Global Capital, claim that millions of their copyrighted articles were employed in training the AI models of OpenAI and Microsoft.

The legal action does not specify monetary damages but emphasizes the need for compensatory measures and a jury trial. It highlights the concern within the news industry that unauthorized use of their content by AI models could undermine traditional news platforms. The complaint points out that AI-generated outputs sometimes misattribute or distort information, potentially damaging the credibility and revenue streams of the publishers.

The publishers argue that AI-generated responses often replicate content verbatim from articles hidden behind paywalls without proper attribution, leading to a decline in direct subscriptions and impacting the financial stability of these publications. While OpenAI and Microsoft have not yet responded to the lawsuit, they have previously defended their practices, citing the legality of training AI models with internet-derived data under fair use provisions.

The companies maintain that AI technologies represent a significant advancement and should be viewed as complementing human-generated content rather than replacing it. This lawsuit is part of a broader examination of the ethical use of copyrighted materials in AI training, prompting various responses within the media industry. Some publishers have opted to engage in direct negotiations with tech firms, as seen in the recent agreement between The Financial Times and OpenAI, setting a precedent for potential licensing agreements.