USA Today and Publishers Representing 19 Newspapers File $250M Copyright Lawsuit Against OpenAI Over Chat GPT

news.law October 15, 2026

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.