A group of US local media organizations, led by Emmerich Newspapers, has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI. The plaintiffs allege that the companies intentionally misappropriated tens of thousands of copyrighted articles to train their artificial intelligence models without authorization.
The lawsuit claims that Microsoft and OpenAI bypassed paywalls and other access restrictions to scrape content. The plaintiffs argue that the tech giants have generated billions of dollars in revenue using this data, while the original publishers received no compensation for the use of their intellectual property.
The legal action involves several entities, including Ojai Media and various branches of the Coopwood Publishing group. These organizations operate primarily in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. The plaintiffs assert that the defendants violated the Copyright Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
The media groups are seeking financial damages for the alleged infringement. Furthermore, they have requested a court injunction that would mandate the removal of the disputed training data from the companies' AI models.
