The Seattle Times and Newsday Sued OpenAI and Microsoft and Asked a Court to Destroy the Training Sets

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The Seattle Times Co. and Newsday filed a federal copyright and trademark complaint in the Southern District of New York on September 4, 2026, alleging OpenAI and Microsoft scraped their sites including paywalled articles to train ChatGPT, Copilot and Bing AI features. Beyond damages, the papers are asking for destruction of every AI training set built on their work, which is the remedy that matters more than the money. Microsoft said it was surprised and open to talks; OpenAI restated its fair-use position, the same defense the DOJ backed in its brief last week.