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The eight newspapers, owned by investment firm Alden Global
Capital's MediaNews Group, said in the lawsuit that the
companies unlawfully copied millions of their articles to train
AI products, including Microsoft's Copilot and OpenAI's ChatGPT.
The complaint follows similar ongoing lawsuits against Microsoft
and OpenAI, which has received billions in financial backing
from Microsoft, brought by the New York Times and news outlets
The Intercept, Raw Story and AlterNet.
An OpenAI spokesperson said on Tuesday that the company takes
"great care in our products and design process to support news
organizations." A spokesperson for Microsoft declined to comment
on the complaint.
The newspaper cases are among several potential landmark
lawsuits brought by copyright owners against tech companies over
the data used to train their generative AI systems.
A lawyer for the MediaNews publications, Steven Lieberman, told
Reuters that OpenAI owed its runaway success to the works of
others. The defendants know they have to pay for computers,
chips, and employee salaries, but "think somehow they can get
away with taking content" without permission or payment, he
said.
The lawsuit said Microsoft and OpenAI's systems reproduce the
newspapers' copyrighted content "verbatim" when prompted. It
said ChatGPT also "hallucinates" articles attributed to the
newspapers that harm their reputations, including a fake Denver
Post article touting smoking as an asthma cure and a bogus
Chicago Tribune recommendation for an infant lounger that was
recalled after being linked to child deaths.
The plaintiffs also include the Orlando Sentinel, South Florida
Sun-Sentinel, San Jose Mercury News, Orange County Register and
Twin Cities Pioneer Press. They asked the court for unspecified
monetary damages and an order blocking any further infringement.
(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by David
Bario and Aurora Ellis)
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