National Business Wire (Dec 28) -- The New York Times announced that it sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement on Wednesday in U.S. Federal District Court in Manhattan.

With the latest legal action, the New York Times also becomes "the first major American media organization" to sue the companies operating popular AI platforms.

In its complaint, the New York Times alleged that OpenAI and Microsoft used millions of articles it published to train their automated chatbots, Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT, which in turn now compete with the news outlet as sources of reliable information.

The lawsuit did not specify an exact monetary demand, but stated that the defendants should bear responsibility for "billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages" related to the "unlawful copying and use of The Times's uniquely valuable works."

Additionally, the lawsuit includes a demand that the companies destroy all chatbot models and training data that use copyrighted material from The New York Times.

"Our ongoing conversations with the New York Times have been productive and moving forward constructively, so we are surprised and disappointed with this development," OpenAI said in a statement.

The ChatGPT owner said, "We're hopeful that we will find a mutually beneficial way to work together, as we are doing with many other publishers."