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Thursday, Several news organizations have accused OpenAI to withhold evidence about how the company trained its AI models in a new move linked to a series of ongoing copyright lawsuits.
The proposal was submitted by 17 publishers, including The New York Times, New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Ziff Davis (parent company of CNET). Ziff Davis sued OpenAI in 2025, alleging that OpenAI invalidated its copyrighted works for training ChatGPT and other large language models.
The initial lawsuit dates back to 2023 when The New York Times first filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and MicrosoftAlleging that companies built their own AI technologies using millions of news articles written by journalists. Microsoft and OpenAI denied the allegations.
The motion asks the court to impose legal sanctions on OpenAI, but not on Microsoft, for allegedly withholding evidence, such as datasets and records of output, and claims that “OpenAI chose to obstruct” by failing to provide it. If these penalties are granted, OpenAI may be required to pay financial penalties.
“This motion asks the court to punish OpenAI for concealing and destroying evidence showing how ChatGPT was trained to hack journalism,” said Steven Lieberman, an attorney for the New York Daily News. news agency.
At the heart of the lawsuits is how generative AI, like ChatGPT, is trained and how its information is obtained. The Times’ original lawsuit claims that OpenAI’s generative AI tools “can generate output that reads the Times’s content verbatim, closely summarizes it, and mimics its expressive style,” raising questions about copyright infringement.
The lawsuits come amid a broader conversation in the journalism industry: declining digital media traffic. AI insights are often cited as a major reason for decreased clicks on original reporting by writers and editors, which in turn impacts publishers’ advertising revenues.
The increasing reliance on AI-powered chatbots to find news and other content is also a major concern for publishers, as it sucks away loyal readers and audiences. Some data suggests that small publishers have reportedly been hit the hardest Traffic reduced by 60%While another analysis is expected Traffic decline by more than 40% by 2029.
A statement from Ziff Davis notes that “OpenAI has copied and monetized Ziff Davis content without permission on a large scale.” Since the lawsuit, OpenAI has “repeatedly lied about its ability to search its datasets for Ziff Davis content and has engaged in other serious judicial misconduct,” said Lance Koonce, a partner at Klaris Law and Ziff Davis’ attorney.
Ongoing debate about copyright and artificial intelligence
OpenAI has long maintained that AI training is… Fair use. An OpenAI spokesperson denied the allegations in a statement to CNET, saying: “As the Times’ case weakens and they are forced to drop their claims against us, they are continuing their efforts to invade the privacy of people who have nothing to do with this case, including by making these blatantly false claims.” The statement went on to say: “We will continue to defend our users’ privacy and the well-established principles of fair use.”
In a 2024 Refutation of the original lawsuit OpenAI, provided by The New York Times, said the publisher falsely accused the company of destroying data and instead accused the newspaper of “secretly” deleting its data that would have shown internal use of OpenAI’s products. Although the Times has One lawsuit against OpenAI was droppedThe largest case remains in litigation.
Other tech giants, incl deadThey have also been accused by authors and news publishers of copyright infringement. Many of these cases are still being litigated as courts decide where to draw the line between fair use and infringement in the age of AI.
