8 US newspapers sue OpenAI, Microsoft for copyright breach

Eight US newspapers, including the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Denver Post, have sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the tech giants have used copyrighted articles to train AI chatbots without securing approval or paying fees.

This is yet another copyright-related lawsuit for OpenAI. The New York Times filed a similar case in December 2023, as have fiction and nonfiction authors including George R.R. Martin, whose work was adapted into the Game of Thrones television series.

“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, executive editor for the MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing, whose newspapers are part of the suit.

All eight claimants share an owner in Alden Global Capital, a New York-based hedge fund.

For its part, OpenAI has since worked out licensing deals with publishing companies like Axel Springer, which owns Politico and Business Insider, as well as the Financial Times and the Associated Press.

However, battles like this have gone beyond Manhattan courtrooms and into places like Singapore. Authors in the city-state have aired grievances over a Southeast Asia-focused large language model spearheaded by the Singapore government.

See also: AI is not an artist, says court