USA Today Co., Inc., the parent company of USA Today and numerous local newspapers, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in federal court in New York on October 8, 2026. The complaint alleges that OpenAI trained its large language models, including GPT-1 through GPT-6.1 and GPT-OSS, on copyrighted material scraped from the internet without permission. The lawsuit claims this unauthorized use included "hundreds of thousands" of articles from 19 publications, such as USA Today, The Tennessean, and the Detroit Free Press.
The filing contends that OpenAI's models were trained on content regardless of paywalls or other access restrictions, and that OpenAI used programs to remove copyright management information from these works. The plaintiffs argue that when OpenAI's chatbot outputs reproduce or repackage their content, users have no reason to visit the original sources or subscribe to their publications. The complaint cites an OpenAI engineer's statement that users are unlikely to click links to underlying sources, even if prominently displayed, and quotes OpenAI's Head of ChatGPT acknowledging that after receiving an answer, there is "no good reason to click" a link.
USA Today Co. is seeking more than $250 million in damages. This includes up to $150,000 for each willful copyright infringement and up to $25,000 for each instance of removing copyright management information. The lawsuit also requests a court order to destroy GPT models and training sets that utilize content from the 19 involved publications, and demands a jury trial. The plaintiffs allege that OpenAI's commercial success is based on large-scale copyright infringement and that the company did not seek permission for its use of content.
The complaint highlights OpenAI's own disclosures, stating that ChatGPT had over 900 million weekly active users and more than 50 million paying subscribers as of March 2026. The lawsuit asserts that OpenAI's unlawful conduct has caused and continues to cause substantial financial harm to the publications, which rely on reader visits and subscriptions to fund their journalism. The plaintiffs accuse OpenAI of willful infringement, arguing the company "knew or should have known" its models were copying content on a massive scale during training without permission.
This action is the latest in a series of copyright lawsuits filed against OpenAI by news organizations. The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023, alleging copyright infringement, trademark issues, misappropriation, and false attribution. Other media entities that have filed legal claims against OpenAI include The Intercept, Ziff Davis (owner of CNET), CBC/Radio-Canada, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and a coalition of nearly 400 local newspapers. OpenAI has stated in previous cases that its use of publicly available data for general training purposes constitutes fair use.