USA Today and publishers representing 19 newspapers are seeking more than $250 million from OpenAI and a court order to destroy AI models and training datasets allegedly containing their copyrighted journalism. The lawsuit accuses the company behind ChatGPT of copying hundreds of thousands of news articles without permission to train its artificial intelligence systems and reproducing protected reporting through its chatbot.
Filed October 8, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the case names seven OpenAI entities as defendants. USA Today Co. and 13 affiliated companies brought the action over content published by newspapers including The Arizona Republic, Detroit Free Press, The Tennessean, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Indianapolis Star.
The 79-page complaint identifies more than 160,000 entries from the newspapers' websites in OpenAI's WebText training dataset, including approximately 83,300 associated with USA Today's flagship website. The publications allege that OpenAI collected articles regardless of paywalls and other access restrictions, citing internal company communications they say show that OpenAI deliberately targeted news content while developing technology capable of reproducing it.
In examples submitted with the filing, the newspaper companies tested GPT-5.6 by asking it to locate and summarize specific articles, producing outputs they contend reproduced protected reporting. They argue that readers can obtain their journalism directly through ChatGPT, potentially reducing traffic to newspaper websites and undermining subscription, advertising and licensing revenue.
OpenAI also faces claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for allegedly removing identifying information from copyrighted material. The newspapers contend that author names, titles and other ownership details were stripped from their reporting.
OpenAI has defended its use of copyrighted material in other lawsuits under the fair-use doctrine, which allows certain uses of protected works without permission. USA Today argues that the commercial use of its journalism and the potential for ChatGPT to substitute for newspaper content undermine that defense.
The newspapers also invoke Section 503(b) of the Copyright Act, which allows courts to order the destruction or disposal of certain infringing copies. They want that remedy applied to GPT and other large language models, along with training datasets incorporating their material.
The complaint seeks an injunction against further infringement, profits attributable to the alleged copying and attorneys' fees.
The case adds to OpenAI's ongoing copyright battles with news organizations, including The New York Times, which sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023 over the alleged unauthorized use of its journalism in AI development. USA Today and its affiliated publishers have also asked the Manhattan federal court to treat their lawsuit as related to existing consolidated copyright litigation involving OpenAI.
The newspaper companies have requested a jury trial.
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