Newspaper Publishers Sue Tech Giants Over AI Copyright Infringement

In a move that escalates the ongoing battle over the use of online data to power artificial intelligence, eight major U.S. daily newspapers have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, the New York Times reported yesterday.

The publications, owned by media conglomerate Alden Global Capital, accuse the tech companies of illegally using copyrighted news articles to train and feed their AI chatbots, including ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Southern District of New York, alleges copyright infringement, unfair competition, and trademark dilution.

“We’ve spent billions of dollars gathering information and reporting news at our publications, and we can’t allow OpenAI and Microsoft to expand the Big Tech playbook of stealing our work to build their own businesses at our expense,” said Frank Pine, the executive editor overseeing Alden’s newspapers.

The complaint states that the AI chatbots frequently surfaced full articles from the publishers’ paywalled content, reducing the need for readers to subscribe and depriving the newspapers of both subscription and licensing revenue.

Furthermore, the lawsuit claims the chatbots sometimes attributed inaccurate or misleading information to the publications, “tarnishing the newspapers’ reputations and spreading dangerous information.”

An OpenAI spokesperson acknowledged the company was “not previously aware” of Alden’s concerns but expressed a desire to explore opportunities with news partners. Microsoft declined to comment.

This lawsuit adds to the ongoing debate over the use of online data to train generative AI models. Other publishers, including The New York Times, have also taken legal action against tech giants over copyright infringement concerns.

“This issue is not just a business problem for a handful of newspapers or the newspaper industry at large,” the lawsuit stated. “It is a critical issue for civic life in America.”