Two other news organizations are suing OpenAI and Microsoft for allegedly using their journalism to train AI.
a demand presented by The Seattle Times and Newsday argued that with the advent of AI, the journalism industry could “be broken beyond repair.” The lawsuit describes generative AI as “a snake eating its own tail” that could “destroy the very organizations” that produce the content it is trained on.
“Artificial intelligence products like ChatGPT and CoPilot market themselves as content producers, but in reality they are rapacious consumers, devouring human-written content and returning to the world copies and imitations derived from that same original content they consumed to achieve their commercial objectives,” the lawsuit says.
In 2023, The New York Times sued OpenAI and its partner/investor Microsoft for alleged copyright infringement; other publications have followed suit as the case has progressed. The Seattle Times lawsuit is particularly notable because Microsoft and OpenAI have funded some of the organization’s journalism projects and grants.
A Microsoft spokesperson he told GeekWire that the company is “surprised by the lawsuit” but “is always happy to sit down and explore solutions to these types of disputes.”