The Seattle Times and Newsday have jointly sued OpenAI and Microsoft, accusing the companies of using their copyrighted journalism to train artificial intelligence models without permission, according to Engadget. Engadget reports that the lawsuit was filed Friday and frames the case as part of a widening legal fight between news publishers and AI companies over how generative models are trained. The two publishers described generative AI in the complaint as “a snake eating its own tail,” arguing that systems trained on news content could undermine the organizations that produced that content. The central allegation, as summarized by Engadget, is that OpenAI and Microsoft trained AI models on copyrighted works from the Seattle Times and Newsday. The publishers also allege the companies were “methodically scraping” articles in a way that bypassed paywalls. The claimed harms go beyond unauthorized copying. Engadget reports that the publishers say AI-generated answers can act as substitutes for news articles, reducing traffic and digital advertising revenue for their sites. The lawsuit also alleges that AI systems may generate hallucinated information and falsely attribute it to the news outlets. The complaint further alleges that copyright management information was removed from articles. Within the provided reporting, that remains an allegation by the plaintiffs, not a finding by a court. The case adds two more publishers to a growing set of disputes over AI training and news content. Engadget notes that The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023 on similar grounds, while CNN sued Perplexity for copyright infringement earlier this year. Not every publisher has chosen litigation. Engadget also points to AP and Vox Media as examples of news organizations that have partnered with OpenAI, allowing the company to train models on their material. That split—lawsuits on one side, licensing and partnership deals on the other—is now a central fault line in the relationship between AI developers and media companies. Who benefits: Publishers pursuing licensing leverage benefit if these suits increase pressure on AI companies to pay for news content. The provided reporting does not indicate any ruling yet. Who's exposed: AI companies that trained models on publisher content face continued legal exposure as more news organizations sue. News organizations also remain exposed to the traffic and revenue harms they allege if AI-generated answers substitute for article visits.