Tampa Bay Times publisher sues OpenAI, Microsoft

Times Publishing Company, the corporate publisher of the Tampa Bay Times, sued OpenAI and Microsoft on Sept. 16 in the Southern District of New York, alleging copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement, and removal of copyright management information under the DMCA, per the complaint and Chat GPT Is Eating the World. The case will likely be assigned to Judge Stein and folded into the consolidated In re OpenAI Copyright Infringement Litigation MDL, then stayed pending summary judgment briefing already underway. It is the second newspaper-publisher suit against the pair in under two weeks, after the Seattle Times and Newsday filed a joint complaint Sept. 4; per this complaint’s own count, it is the 27th copyright suit against OpenAI and the 15th against Microsoft, out of 143 filed industry-wide against AI companies.