It’s hard to keep track of everyone suing AI companies for stealing their work.
Those gleaming AI platforms, the costliest computer systems ever built, are peddling more stolen goods than a seedy pawnshop.
But it’s worth following a lawsuit filed June 24 by a group of small newspapers, alleging that OpenAI and Microsoft pilfered news stories to train their AI systems.
The outcome will be a factor in the long-term survival of America’s independent, local free press system. Its decline has led to civic illiteracy and political polarization, things that will worsen if remaining sources of authentic, trusted, original reporting are snuffed by online pirates.
These newspapers aren’t as glamorous as actors, musicians and novelists who asked courts to protect them from AI theft.
Nor are they the first papers to sue. The New York Times blazed the trail, spending more than $28 million since 2023 on its copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. Dailies owned by Alden Global Capital sued them in 2024.
The new lawsuit was filed by 35 publishers operating around 400 small, community newspapers. It joins a train of related cases, including The New York Times’, before the same federal judge in New York.
A key issue is whether AI training was “fair use” of newspaper content.
If that concept is clarified to better protect newspapers’ work, it could turn the tide for the roughly 5,400 papers producing most of America’s local journalism.
That work is not just repeating shared facts. It involves researching, conceiving, reporting, editing and presenting stories with a unique voice and angles, creating distinct products that deserve copyright protection.
Even when AI companies began paying a few large papers and wire services, small papers were left out. Yet they are often providing their communities’ only local reporting, making their work valuable to companies purporting to be universal sources of current knowledge.
“Right now this is a group of companies that are not at the table on these issues,” said Matthew Platkin, a former New Jersey attorney general representing the small papers.
“They’re family owned for the most part, they’re not large hedge-fund operations,” he said. “These are largely mom-and-pop operations that do the hard work of showing up at community events, sports events and town council meetings and other things that really affect people’s lives.”
Their suit said the papers spent decades “investing in journalists, editors and infrastructure required to produce the trusted, original reporting on which their communities depend.”
“Without permission and without any compensation to the Publishers, Defendants scraped, copied and ingested that content to build and commercialize their generative artificial intelligence products, including ChatGPT and Microsoft CoPilot,” it states.
Those AI products generated hundreds of billions of dollars in market value yet “not a cent” went to publishers “whose work made it possible,” it states.
If these newspapers prevail or secure good settlements, that could create a framework for compensating others.
That’s not a silver bullet. Many things are needed to strengthen the industry. But to survive long-term, it must get paid for commercial use of its work online — especially by competing sources of news and information.
Federal and state legislation to help publishers get paid was defeated by tech firms and their allies, leaving courts the best hope for exploited outlets.
“We think it’s critical to be compensated for any of our work, regardless of the channel,” said Zack Richner of Richner Communications, a family-owned, Long Island publishing group and lead plaintiff.
Richner said publishers “are not anti-innovation or anti-progress” and believe AI tools may help journalists do their jobs.
“The rub is that those tools were built on the backs of our workers … and built up these trillion-dollar companies and we don’t see any of the fruits of that labor,” he said. “Somebody else is seeing the fruits of that labor and we just want it to be shared fairly.”
OpenAI didn’t respond before deadline. Microsoft, which has strongly supported publishers but is betting its future on AI, provided a statement:
“These claims mirror allegations we’ve seen in prior litigation, we believe they lack merit and, as before, we will defend ourselves vigorously in court. Lawfully developed AI-powered tools should be allowed to advance responsibly, just like valuable technologies of the past, but they are not a substitute for the vital role that journalists and local news organizations play in our society.”
If nothing else, the lawsuit is more evidence that even small newspapers are evolving and looking forward.
Newspapers spent billions building their online presence and capabilities to generate revenue from digital advertising and subscriptions, plaintiff Jeremy Gulban said.
Now AI companies are seemingly “going to be the ones that are monetizing the content, even though they’re not creating it,” said Gulban, a New Jersey tech entrepreneur who began acquiring newspapers in 2020.
“This technology could change the world, I don’t think there’s any question about that,” he said. “But it’s got to be done in a manner that preserves the intellectual property rights of people who write things for a living.”
I’m glad to see these publishers fighting back. Perhaps they won’t get shafted like the previous generation was during the rise of search and social media.
Gulban said “there’s a different perspective and there’s lessons learned from the past.”
“I wasn’t in the business back in the early 2000s when that wave happened but I hear a lot of people say we can’t repeat the mistakes of the past, where we gave away the content and hoped for the best,” he said. “This time, I think there’s a feeling we have to be more in control of our own destiny here.”
Federal judges have been on a roll lately, defending cornerstones of our democracy. This is another opportunity to make things right.
