USA Today Co., together with the local newspapers it owns, sued OpenAI in Manhattan federal court on Thursday, alleging the company copied "hundreds of thousands" of articles without permission to train its AI models. The publisher is seeking damages of more than $250 million — including up to $150,000 per infringed work — and says the unauthorized use "has done real and continuing" harm to its outlets.
The complaint names 13 affiliated entities, including The Tennessean, the Indianapolis Star, The Columbus Dispatch and The Oklahoman. "OpenAI's commercial success rests on large-scale copyright infringement," the filing argues, claiming the company never asked for permission and instead "took" USA Today's content to "build products worth hundreds of billions of dollars."
It is the latest in a growing stack of cases against OpenAI. The New York Times, The Intercept, Ziff Davis (CNET), CBC/Radio-Canada, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Merriam-Webster, The Seattle Times and a coalition of nearly 400 local newspapers have all filed suit. OpenAI's copyright litigation has been consolidated into a multidistrict proceeding that is already entering summary judgment — which makes this new complaint an unusually late arrival, landing while the earlier cases are being decided.
The political backdrop is awkward for the plaintiffs: the Justice Department recently urged a court to side with OpenAI in the Times case, arguing that training a large language model on copyrighted works does not violate copyright law. OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
