Many US newspapers sue OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement

The newspapers that filed the lawsuit in federal court in New York include the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, MediaNews Group's Mercury News, Orange County Register, St. Paul Pioneer-Press, Tribune Publishing's Orlando Sentinel, and South Florida Sun Sentinel. All of these newspapers are owned by Alden Global Capital.

The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI and Microsoft stole millions of copyrighted news articles or failed to pay for them to train their artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots. The newspapers say they have spent billions of dollars on news gathering and reporting and will not allow OpenAI and Microsoft to continue stealing content for their own benefit without paying.

Microsoft declined to comment on the report, while OpenAI said it was not previously aware of Alden Global Capital's concerns and that it has reached out to news organizations around the world to explore opportunities, discuss concerns, and offer solutions.

In addition to the newspapers, OpenAI and Microsoft are also facing copyright infringement lawsuits from The New York Times and several prominent authors including John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George R.R. Martin in New York. The two tech companies are also being sued in a federal court in San Francisco.

Tech companies often argue that taking publicly available content from the internet to train artificial intelligence systems is protected by U.S. intellectual property law. In some cases, the companies avoid legal challenges by paying news organizations.

The US news agency AP agreed to a partnership with OpenAI last year, in which OpenAI will pay a fee to access AP’s news archive. OpenAI has also signed agreements with a number of other media companies, including Axel Springer in Germany and Prisa Media in Spain, the French newspaper Le Monde and most recently the London-based Financial Times.