Seattle Times and Newsday sue OpenAI and Microsoft, ask court to destroy AI models and training datasets

What happened: On 2026-09-04 The Seattle Times and Newsday filed a copyright infringement suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging OpenAI and Microsoft scraped hundreds of thousands of their articles — including paywalled content — to train products including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Bing AI features. The complaint cites ChatGPT reproducing 88 consecutive words of a Seattle Times Boeing 737 MAX article from its headline and URL. Beyond damages and an injunction, the papers ask the court to order the destruction of infringing copies, training datasets, and AI models incorporating their journalism. Claims include direct and vicarious infringement, DMCA violations and trademark dilution.

Why it matters to creators: The requested remedy — model destruction — is the most aggressive publisher ask yet and, if ever granted, would be far more consequential than damages; for news creators it signals publishers are willing to litigate toward existential remedies, not just licensing payouts. The case also tests whether AI-generated paraphrase that substitutes for paid journalism counts as market harm.

Not yet known: No destruction order has been entered; publishers must first prove infringement and overcome the expected fair-use defense. The suit is factually distinct from, but parallel to, the earlier NYT case.