The Mercury News is one of several daily newspapers across the country that are suing OpenAI and Microsoft over alleged copyright infringement.
A group of eight local daily newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital filed a lawsuit on Tuesday, alleging that OpenAI and Microsoft scraped content without permission and without proper compensation to train their AI systems.
Even more newspapers could potentially join the lawsuit, Axios reported. Alden Global owns dozens of local newspapers nationwide.
For now, the Mercury News is suing alongside the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, South Florida Sun Sentinel, Denver Post, Orange County Register and St. Paul Pioneer Press.
And the new complaint is similar to a lawsuit filed by the New York Times against OpenAi and Microsoft late last year.
The newspapers in Alden Global's portfolio are alleging that OpenAI and Microsoft illegally used protected content to train their AI chatbots, removed bylines in AI output and used trademarks without authorization.
They are also accusing OpenAI and Microsoft of causing reputational harm due to the prevalence of so-called hallucinations, or made-up responses, that appear in responses generated by their AI chatbots.
"As if plagiarizing the Publishers’ work were not enough, Defendants’ products are often subject to 'hallucinations' where those products malign the Publishers’ credibility by falsely attributing inaccurate reporting to the Publishers’ newspapers. Beyond just profiting from the theft of the Publishers’ content, Defendants are actively tarnishing the newspapers’ reputations and spreading dangerous disinformation," the complaint says.
The complaint asks for an unspecified amount of damages, seeks an injunction to prevent further misuse of content, and also wants an order for the destruction "of all GPT or other LLM models and training sets that incorporate the Publishers’ Works."
Microsoft declined to comment.
"While we were not previously aware of Alden Global Capital's concerns, we are actively engaged in constructive partnerships and conversations with many news organizations around the world to explore opportunities, discuss any concerns, and provide solutions," a spokesperson for OpenAI wrote in a prepared statement.
Other publications have taken a different approaching, striking deals with AI companies around content licensing, training and other AI-related activities.
On Monday, OpenAI and the Financial Times announced their own content-licensing deal.
Google has also agreed to pay News Corp. between $5 million to $6 million annually to fund AI-related projects, the Information reported on Tuesday. The News Corp. media empire includes the Wall Street Journal, HarperCollins, Realtor.com, the New York Post, and more than a dozen other brands in the U.K. and Australia.
Last year, OpenAI announced deals with Axel Springer, a German news publisher that owns Politico and Business Insider, and the Associated Press.
Bloomberg News reported earlier this year that OpenAI was also in talks with CNN, Time, Fox Corp., and dozens of other news publications regarding potential content licensing deals.
