NYT-led group asks court to sanction OpenAI in US copyright dispute
The New York Times and other US news outlets are seeking court sanctions against OpenAI, alleging the company concealed evidence regarding how its AI systems were trained on copyrighted news content. The dispute centres on whether ChatGPT unfairly competes with journalism by using articles without compensation.
A coalition of American news organizations, led by The New York Times, has filed a motion in Manhattan federal court requesting sanctions against OpenAI for alleged evidence obstruction in an ongoing copyright infringement case. The newspapers contend that OpenAI and its partner Microsoft constructed their artificial intelligence systems using millions of news articles without proper authorization or compensation. The core dispute examines whether AI chatbots function as competing information sources that divert traffic from news websites without performing the underlying journalistic work.
The plaintiffs allege that OpenAI deliberately withheld datasets and ChatGPT conversation logs that would demonstrate how the system utilized copyrighted news material during its development. According to the filing, a recent deposition of an OpenAI employee contradicted the company's previous statements regarding its capacity to identify copyrighted content within its training data. The Daily News' legal representative characterized OpenAI's conduct as involving misrepresentations spanning two years about its ability to locate copyrighted material in its systems.
OpenAI has previously resisted disclosure of ChatGPT logs, citing user privacy concerns. The company's spokesperson disputed the allegations, asserting that the newspapers' case has weakened and that they are pursuing privacy violations against individuals unrelated to the dispute. The New York Times initiated the lawsuit in late 2023, approximately one year after ChatGPT's commercial release triggered an artificial intelligence boom. The threat to news organizations intensified when Google introduced AI-generated search summaries in 2024, reducing click-through traffic to original news sources and associated advertising revenue.
This case represents one of numerous copyright disputes filed by content creators, including authors, visual artists, and music labels, against technology companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta Platforms. According to regulatory filings, The New York Times has expended more than $28 million on litigation against artificial intelligence companies.
Bell tracks these organizations in depth — profiles, people, signals, and history. See them inside Bell →
Provenance on every fact. Sovereign-grade by design.