Publishers sue OpenAI and Microsoft over alleged news scraping

A coalition of publishers that owns and operates nearly 400 newspapers sued OpenAI and Microsoft in federal court in New York on June 24, accusing the companies of scraping news reporting without permission or compensation to build products such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York under Richner Communications, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., No. 1:26-cv-05320, says the companies systematically copied articles from publishers’ websites, stored them on their own servers, stripped copyright-management information and used the material to train large language models. It also says the systems can reproduce or closely mirror reporting in response to user prompts.

The plaintiffs are led by Long Island-based Richner Communications and represented by Platkin LLP. Court papers identify dozens of newspaper companies and properties, including AIM Media Indiana Operating, AIM Media Midwest Operating, AIM Media Texas Operating, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, CherryRoad Media, Community Impact Newspaper Co., WEHCO Newspapers and Wick Communications. The coalition says it is the largest group of local newspaper publishers assembled to date.

The lawsuit seeks statutory damages, actual damages, restitution of profits and attorney’s fees, and it accuses the companies of three separate counts of copyright infringement. The publishers say the case is about more than a licensing dispute: they argue that if AI firms can ingest reporting at scale without a negotiated deal, the business model for local journalism is at risk.

That warning lands hard for newsrooms that still cover school boards, statehouses, courts and neighborhood issues that larger outlets often miss. The plaintiffs say the market value of generative AI has been built, in part, on work produced by local reporters and editors who have not been paid for that use.

Matthew J. Platkin, New Jersey’s attorney general from 2022 to 2026, described the case as the largest coalition of local newspaper publishers assembled so far. OpenAI said its models are trained on publicly available data and grounded in fair use, while Microsoft did not immediately comment.

The suit joins other copyright fights already pending against OpenAI, including litigation brought by The New York Times and other publishers. Its outcome could help determine whether news content is treated as raw material for commercial AI systems or as copyrighted reporting that requires licensing before it is used.