Seattle Times and Newsday Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over Unauthorized Use of Published Work

Quick Facts

The Seattle Times and Newsday filed a 38-page federal complaint on Sept. 4, 2026, alleging OpenAI and Microsoft scraped content from behind subscription paywalls without consent or payment.
The publishers are seeking damages and the destruction of all AI training datasets incorporating their work.
The lawsuit arrived the same day OpenAI and Microsoft filed a fair use motion in the New York Times’ related multidistrict litigation.

The Seattle Times Co. and Newsday LLC sued OpenAI and Microsoft on Sept. 4, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The 38-page federal complaint accuses both companies of scraping published articles, including content behind paywalls, to train and operate products such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Bing’s AI features.

The publishers also allege trademark dilution, saying OpenAI generated content that falsely attributed fabricated stories to the Seattle Times and Newsday by name.

“This was not an easy decision,” Seattle Times President and CEO Alan Fisco wrote in an email to employees. “However, we feel strongly that we must defend our content, which we spend millions of dollars a year to produce, from being used without our consent or compensation.” Fisco said the suit was “not about impeding AI innovation” but about protecting the paper’s business model.

Newsday spokesperson Tara Rogers said both outlets support responsible AI innovation but that protecting their content investments is essential.

The timing of the filing is notable. On the same day, OpenAI and Microsoft submitted a summary judgment motion in the New York Times’ separate litigation, arguing that AI training constitutes fair use. The Justice Department filed a brief on Sept. 2 backing that position, calling large language model training “highly transformative” and linking the issue to national security and U.S. economic competitiveness.

The Seattle Times lawsuit carries an added layer of complexity. Microsoft Philanthropies funds some Seattle Times journalism projects, and in 2024 OpenAI and Microsoft contributed to a $10 million grant through The Lenfest Institute for Journalism that placed a two-year AI fellow at the Seattle Times and other publishers. The stated purpose was to help newsrooms build AI-driven business sustainability.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs cited industry data showing search referral traffic to midsize publishers fell 47% year over year in December 2025. The complaint warns that generative AI could leave the journalism industry “broken beyond repair,” describing AI products as “rapacious consumers” that deliver back “copies and derivative imitations” of the content they were trained on.

An OpenAI spokesperson said the company’s models are trained on publicly available data and that its approach is “grounded in fair use, which helps hundreds of millions of people improve their daily lives.” A Microsoft spokesperson said the company was “surprised by the lawsuit” and is “always happy to sit down and explore solutions.”

The case joins a growing wave of publisher litigation. In June 2026, nearly 400 local newspaper outlets across 33 states filed a separate federal suit against OpenAI and Microsoft. The New York Times has spent more than $28 million on its own suit since 2023. OpenAI’s current valuation stands at approximately $852 billion.

The remedies the Seattle Times and Newsday are requesting go well beyond financial damages. The publishers want courts to order the impoundment or destruction of any datasets and models built using their work, a demand that would require unwinding years of AI development if granted.

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