A group of publishers owning nearly 400 newspapers filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft on Wednesday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging the tech giants used their content without permission or compensation to develop products like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. The publishers allege the defendants "systematically and secretly crawled" their websites, copying articles and original works onto their own servers, and argue that these generative AI products have generated billions of dollars in market value for OpenAI and Microsoft without sharing a cent with them. The publishers warned that unless AI companies are held accountable, the AI boom will be a "death knell for local journalism." OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri defended the company's practices, stating models are "trained on publicly available data" and grounded in fair use, while a Microsoft representative had yet to respond. The lawsuit, part of a larger trend of legal action against AI developers, seeks statutory damages and injunctive relief for copyright infringement and violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The case is Richner Commc'ns, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. S.D.N.Y. No. 1:26-cv-05320, with a complaint filed on June 24, 2026.