GoKawiilis the Verge’s weekend editor. He’s covered the tech industry for over 18 years and knows a thing or two about synths.
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The Seattle Times and Newsday are just the latest plaintiffs to take OpenAI to court, alleging copyright infringement. The two outlets say the company used their journalism as training data for its AI models without permission and often reproduces passages from their reporting in response to user queries. This is similar to lawsuits filed by The New York Times, Ziff Davis, Merriam-Webster, and Encyclopedia Britannica against OpenAI.
The Seattle Times and Newsday also named Microsoft as a defendant in the suit, since Copilot is built on OpenAI’s technology. The publishers join a list of nearly 400 local newspapers that recently sued the two companies, saying that because the chatbots reduce the need to visit their sites for reporting and answers, they cost them valuable subscription revenue.
As part of the suit, The Seattle Times and Newsday are seeking the destruction of any copies of their works the companies are holding, as well as training datasets and AI models that incorporate them. OpenAI and Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.