Nearly 400 local newspapers sue OpenAI and Microsoft over copyright

https://media.thenextweb.com/2026/05/china-court-ai-layoffs-illegal-labor-law.avif

A coalition that owns nearly 400 local US newspapers has sued OpenAI and Microsoft. The publishers call AI training on their reporting a death knell for local journalism. It is the largest copyright case the local press has brought yet.

Local newspapers report the meetings no algorithm attends. The council vote, the school board row, the obituary, the new restaurant downtown. Now the people who own nearly 400 of those papers want a court to decide one thing. What is that reporting worth to an AI company?

On the evening of 24 June, a nationwide coalition of publishers sued OpenAI and Microsoft. The case landed in Manhattan federal court. The 55-page complaint is blunt. It says the two firms copied hundreds of thousands of articles to build ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. They sought no permission and paid nothing.

The case was first detailed by Courthouse News. It is led...

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