USA Today is taking OpenAI to court. The newspaper publisher and more than a dozen of its affiliated outlets sued the ChatGPT maker in Manhattan federal court on Thursday, alleging the company copied hundreds of thousands of their articles without permission to train its AI models — and is now using that journalism to compete directly with the papers that produced it.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeks damages “in excess of $250 million” and a court order blocking OpenAI’s alleged infringement, Reuters reported. OpenAI did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
What USA Today’s copyright lawsuit against OpenAI alleges
According to the complaint, OpenAI copied hundreds of thousands of articles and other materials from 19 publications owned by USA Today Co. and its entities — including the Indianapolis Star, The Arizona Republic and the Detroit Free Press — and used them without permission to train the large language models behind ChatGPT.
The plaintiffs argue that OpenAI didn’t just train on their journalism; it repackages it. The complaint includes exhibits of GPT output examples, and the publishers claim the chatbot reproduces or reframes their reporting in ways that substitute for the original articles — siphoning away the readers and advertising revenue that keep newsrooms alive.
The case, USA Today Co., Inc. v. OpenAI Foundation, No. 1:26-cv-08892, was filed by attorney Steven Lieberman of Rothwell, Figg, Ernst & Manbeck. The same day, the plaintiffs asked that the case be treated as related to the consolidated OpenAI copyright infringement litigation already pending in that court — a signal that this filing could be folded into the broader war between publishers and AI companies.
The money: how statutory damages could reach $250 million
USA Today’s complaint is one of dozens of high-stakes copyright lawsuits filed by copyright owners against tech companies including OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta Platforms, according to Reuters. The tech companies have argued that their systems make fair use of copyrighted material by transforming it into something new — a defense that courts have yet to settle definitively at scale.
Whether a court would award anything close to the headline number is a separate question — judges have wide discretion to reduce statutory damages — but the $250 million demand sets the tone: publishers now treat AI training data as an asset worth nine-figure compensation.
One of dozens: the expanding legal war over AI training data
USA Today’s complaint is one of dozens of high-stakes copyright lawsuits filed by copyright owners against tech companies including OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta Platforms, according to Unite.AI. The tech companies have argued that their systems make fair use of copyrighted material by transforming it into something new — a defense that courts have yet to settle definitively at scale.
The most prominent parallel case is in the same Manhattan courthouse: OpenAI and its largest financial backer, Microsoft, face similar copyright claims from prominent authors and news outlets including the New York Times, whose lawsuit was filed in December 2023.
Publishers are also suing the other AI labs. Earlier this month, Emmerich Newspapers and other local outlets sued Microsoft and OpenAI over tens of thousands of allegedly stolen articles — with the publishers noting the two companies have made billions while they received “not a cent.” Meanwhile, a growing list of publishers — including the Associated Press, Axel Springer, the Financial Times, Time, Vox Media, News Corp and Condé Nast — have signed licensing deals with OpenAI or Microsoft instead of suing, typically worth a reported $1 million to $5 million a year.
USA Today’s decision to litigate rather than license puts it firmly in the fighting camp — and with 19 publications and hundreds of thousands of articles behind the complaint, it’s one of the largest publisher actions yet against an AI company, as TV News Check noted.
What this could mean for ChatGPT and news publishers
If USA Today wins an injunction, OpenAI could be ordered to stop using the publishers’ content — and potentially to address models already trained on it. That’s the remedy that most unsettles the AI industry: it’s one thing to pay for future training data, quite another to unwind what a model already “learned.”
For publishers, the stakes are existential. Gannett, USA Today’s parent, has spent years cutting newsroom staff while watching search and social platforms capture the ad dollars its journalism attracts. Generative AI that answers news questions directly — without sending readers to the source — threatens to accelerate that erosion.
The fair-use question at the heart of the case will likely take years to resolve and could ultimately land before the Supreme Court. Until then, every new filing raises the price of the eventual settlement table — and reminds AI companies that the internet’s archives are not free for the taking, at least not without a fight.
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FAQ
Why is USA Today suing OpenAI?
USA Today Co. and its affiliated outlets allege OpenAI copied hundreds of thousands of their articles from 19 publications without permission to train ChatGPT, and that the chatbot reproduces or repackages their reporting in ways that compete with the original journalism.
How much money is USA Today seeking from OpenAI?
The complaint seeks damages “in excess of $250 million” plus a court order blocking the alleged infringement. Statutory damages can reach $150,000 per willful infringement plus $25,000 per violation for removing copyright management information.
Which court is hearing the USA Today vs. OpenAI case?
The case, USA Today Co., Inc. v. OpenAI Foundation, No. 1:26-cv-08892, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan. The plaintiffs asked that it be treated as related to consolidated OpenAI copyright litigation already pending there.
How does this compare to the New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI?
Both allege OpenAI trained its models on copyrighted journalism without permission, and both are in the same Manhattan federal court. The NYT suit, filed in December 2023, names OpenAI and Microsoft; the USA Today suit names OpenAI and covers 19 Gannett publications. Both are among dozens of similar cases against AI companies.
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