USA Today Sues OpenAI for Over $250 Million Over AI Training Copyright Infringement

USA Today Co. and several newspapers it owns have filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the company of using hundreds of thousands of copyrighted articles without permission to train its artificial intelligence models.

The publishers filed the lawsuit in Manhattan federal court on October 8, 2026, and are seeking more than $250 million in damages, according to Reuters.

The complaint also requests a court order to prevent OpenAI from continuing the alleged infringement.

USA Today challenges OpenAI’s use of copyrighted articles

The lawsuit focuses on OpenAI’s use of copyrighted news content to train the large language models that power ChatGPT.

USA Today argues that OpenAI used its publications’ content without obtaining permission or compensating the copyright holders.

AI companies have generally defended their training practices under the fair use doctrine, arguing that AI models transform existing material into something new rather than simply reproducing it.

The court has not yet determined whether OpenAI violated USA Today’s copyrights.

OpenAI faces growing copyright lawsuits

The lawsuit adds to dozens of legal challenges against AI companies over their use of copyrighted material for model training.

Microsoft and OpenAI recently faced another copyright lawsuit, while OpenAI has also been involved in a legal dispute with The New York Times over data preservation demands.

Other major AI companies, including Anthropic and Meta, face similar copyright-related litigation as publishers and content creators challenge how AI developers obtain training data.

Meanwhile, AI companies face broader regulatory scrutiny. Executives from Anthropic, Google, Meta, and OpenAI recently testified before the New York City Council about AI safety risks.

USA Today’s lawsuit now adds another major legal challenge for OpenAI, with more than $250 million in potential damages at stake.