The publishers allege that the chatbots were able to reproduce entire passages and closely paraphrase reporters’ work, and they are demanding that the companies destroy any copies of the material as well as the training datasets or models that contain it.

Seattle Times president and CEO Alan Fisco wrote to staff, "We feel strongly that we must defend our content — which we spend millions of dollars a year to produce — from being used without our consent or compensation."

OpenAI responded that it only trains its models on publicly available material that falls under fair use, while Microsoft said it was surprised by the lawsuit but is willing to "sit down and explore solutions" with the publishers.

The case comes amid other legal battles over AI training data, including a separate lawsuit filed by the New York Times. The Department of Justice filed a Statement of Interest supporting the publishers, arguing that a ruling in favor of the Times could damage local newsrooms and even threaten national security.

What we can learn is that copyright law is being tested as a tool to limit how AI systems use protected content, and that news organisations are prepared to use the courts to safeguard their journalism and revenue.