Two more newsrooms are taking OpenAI and Microsoft to court.
The Seattle Times and Newsday have each filed lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing the companies of training AI systems on their journalism without permission. The two outlets join a growing list of news organizations making the same allegation. Neither publication has detailed its specific legal theory, the material allegedly used, or the damages it's seeking. For now, the filings simply add two more plaintiffs to a pile of publishers testing whether training an AI model on copyrighted reporting requires a license.
The bigger story here is volume, not novelty. Each additional lawsuit piles more pressure on OpenAI's central defense - that training on published journalism qualifies as fair use - a claim no court has yet resolved definitively. That's a different kind of risk than losing one case: it's death by a thousand filings, even if OpenAI ultimately wins most of them.
Until a judge actually rules on fair use, this list of plaintiffs will only get longer.