What happened
- On September 4, 2026, The Seattle Times and Newsday sued OpenAI and Microsoft in federal court in the Southern District of New York.
- The filing accuses both companies of systematically scraping both newspapers’ sites, including paywalled content, and incorporating those articles into training datasets for ChatGPT, Copilot and Bing’s AI features.
- The newspapers also allege brand dilution: the models allegedly attributed to both mastheads content they never published.
- They seek damages and an order for the seizure or destruction of the copies, training datasets and models that incorporate their material.
Why it matters
- The lawsuit cites industry data according to which referral traffic from search engines to mid-sized media outlets fell 47% year over year. That percentage also describes what’s happening to any content site in Chile that depended on search to exist.
- For anyone producing original content (a media outlet, a brand with a blog, a consultancy that publishes analysis), false attribution is a new reputational risk with no established channel for complaints.
- What’s being sought isn’t just money. Asking for the destruction of trained models changes the nature of the risk for any company that has built a product on top of those models.
The number
A 47% year-over-year drop in referral traffic to mid-sized media outlets, according to the data cited in the lawsuit.
Context
The New York Times sued the same two companies in 2023, and that case is still open. This filing has a detail of its own: Microsoft and OpenAI had funded journalism projects and fellowships at the Seattle Times. OpenAI responded that its models are trained on publicly available data and are protected by fair use. Microsoft said it was surprised by the lawsuit. The litigation comes as paid advertising advances inside AI answers.
What’s next
- No date has been set for an initial hearing, and the filing doesn’t specify an amount of damages.
- The New York Times case against the same companies is still pending in the same court.
Bottom line
The lawsuit describes generative AI as a snake eating its own tail. The image is debatable, but the order of events isn’t: the newspapers whose technology coverage was funded are now suing those who funded that coverage.
Sources
- Seattle Times, Newsday sue OpenAI, Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement — Reuters via Newsmax, September 4, 2026
- Seattle Times and Newsday are the latest publications to sue OpenAI and Microsoft — TechCrunch
Edited by Rodrigo Cornejo. How we select and verify the facts, in who writes.
