OpenAI and Microsoft face lawsuit over alleged massive news content scraping

A three‑year‑old copyright case in New York federal court against OpenAI and Microsoft has been unsealed, revealing that the companies extracted content from more than 10 million news articles, with the New York Times accounting for nearly one‑third of the material. The filing adds publishers such as Ziff Davis, the parent of Mother Jones, The Intercept and numerous local newspapers to the suit. Microsoft’s Director of Applied Science Brent Hect described the practice as an “astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” and a top Microsoft executive characterized the scraping as a massive theft of labor.

Internal Microsoft data show its Copilot answer engine cut click‑through rates to the newspaper’s domain by up to 93%, a decline the company termed a “doom loop.” OpenAI and Microsoft maintain that their use of the material is transformative and falls within fair use.