The lawsuit filed on Wednesday apparently follows an impasse in negotiations involving The Times, Microsoft and OpenAI. In its complaint, The Times said that it approached Microsoft and OpenAI in April to raise concerns about the use of its intellectual property and explore “an amicable resolution” — possibly involving a commercial agreement and “technological guardrails” around generative A.I. products — but that the talks reached no resolution.

Besides seeking to protect intellectual property, the lawsuit by The Times casts ChatGPT and other A.I. systems as potential competitors in the news business. When chatbots are asked about current events or other newsworthy topics, they can generate answers that rely on past journalism by The Times. The newspaper expresses concern that readers will be satisfied with a response from a chatbot and decline to visit The Times’s website, thus reducing web traffic that can be translated into advertising and subscription revenue.

The complaint cites several examples when a chatbot provided users with near-verbatim excerpts from Times articles that would otherwise require a paid subscription to view. It asserts that OpenAI and Microsoft placed particular emphasis on the use of Times journalism in training their A.I. programs because of the perceived reliability and accuracy of the material.

Media organizations have spent the past year examining the legal, financial and journalistic implications of the boom in generative A.I. Some news outlets have already reached agreements for the use of their journalism: The Associated Press struck a licensing deal in July with OpenAI, and Axel Springer, the German publisher that owns Politico and Business Insider, did likewise this month. Terms for those agreements were not disclosed.

After the Axel Springer deal was announced, an OpenAI spokesman said the company respected “the rights of content creators and owners and believes they should benefit from A.I. technology,” adding, “We’re optimistic we will continue to find mutually beneficial ways to work together in support of a rich news ecosystem.”