OpenAI just published amicus briefs from the U.S. government, library groups, and legal scholars backing its defense against The New York Times. The filings argue AI training extracts statistical patterns rather than replacing original works, and curbing fair use would severely threaten scientific progress.
The Trump administration just intervened in The New York Times' copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, arguing that training AI models on copyrighted text constitutes fair use. US attorneys warned that constraining LLM development would hamper scientific progress and American prosperity. The stance could set a defining precedent for multiple pending publisher lawsuits.
The New York Times Tech Guild just filed unfair labor practice charges against the publisher, accusing management of secretly using AI tools DX and Glean to monitor individual performance and fuel disciplinary actions. Workers argue the opaque tracking flattens engineering into unfair quotas, demanding a say before workplaces turn into AI surveillance hubs.
The New York Times just filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against AI search startup Perplexity, accusing it of crawling paywalled articles and reproducing them verbatim via RAG search without compensation. The suit also claims Perplexity hallucinated information and falsely attributed it to the paper. This marks the Times' second major lawsuit against an AI firm following its ongoing fight with OpenAI.
OpenAI just challenged a legal demand from The New York Times to turn over 20 million private ChatGPT conversations, slamming it as a massive privacy invasion. The newspaper claims it needs the records to probe paywall bypasses, but OpenAI asked the court to reject the request and announced it is now developing client-side encryption so not even OpenAI can read them.
Google's AI Overviews and new chat-driven search tools are devastating referral traffic for digital publishers, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Users now get quick answers directly from chatbots instead of clicking blue links, sending The New York Times' organic search traffic share down to 36.5% in April. To survive, media outlets are rushing into licensing and revenue-sharing deals with AI giants.
OpenAI is pushing back against court demands driven by The New York Times requiring it to indefinitely retain consumer ChatGPT and API logs, including deleted chats. OpenAI argued the sweeping order directly breaches its 30-day deletion privacy commitment and confirmed the disputed logs remain locked down from plaintiffs.
OpenAI is fighting a court order requiring it to preserve all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats and sensitive API data. The mandate followed accusations by The New York Times and other publishers that OpenAI was destroying copyright evidence. OpenAI called the sweeping order premature and warned it puts hundreds of millions of users' privacy at risk.
The New York Times just signed its first-ever AI licensing deal with Amazon, agreeing to license news articles, NYT Cooking recipes, and The Athletic coverage for model training and Alexa integration. It marks a major strategic shift for the publisher, which is still battling OpenAI and Microsoft in court over copyright infringement.
Hundreds of major news publishers just launched a coordinated ad campaign pressuring the US government to stop tech giants from scraping copyrighted content without compensation. Led by the News/Media Alliance, the push urges lawmakers to mandate fair pay and attribution, firing back at lobbying from OpenAI and Google.
A federal judge just denied OpenAI’s bid to throw out The New York Times' copyright infringement lawsuit, calling OpenAI's claims a "straw man" argument. OpenAI argued the Times waited too long to sue because the paper's own 2020 article mentioned large-scale web scraping. But Judge Sidney Stein ruled OpenAI offered zero proof that journalists could have predicted ChatGPT would regurgitate full articles two years before launch.
The New York Times just approved a suite of AI tools for newsroom and product staff, even introducing an in-house summarization tool called Echo. Journalists are encouraged to use AI for SEO headlines and research, but guidelines strictly bar direct drafting and uploading confidential source notes. Why it matters: Even while suing OpenAI for copyright infringement, the paper realizes it can't afford to keep AI out of the newsroom.
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas just offered to step in and keep The New York Times running after its tech guild went on strike ahead of the election. The offer quickly sparked backlash on X with critics calling him a scab, prompting Srinivas to clarify that he offered infrastructure help for high-traffic days rather than replacing workers with AI.
Microsoft just cited the humble VCR in a motion to dismiss key claims in The New York Times’ copyright lawsuit. The company argued that large language models are like video recorders or personal computers—technologies with substantial lawful uses that shouldn't be outlawed due to potential misuse. Why it matters: If accepted, this classic defense could protect the entire generative AI sector from crushing copyright liability.
OpenAI just asked a federal judge to dismiss key parts of The New York Times' copyright lawsuit, arguing the publisher used "deceptive prompts" and exploited bugs to force ChatGPT into spitting out verbatim text. The Times fired back, claiming it was merely hunting for evidence of unlicensed copying.
The New York Times just started assembling a dedicated newsroom team to explore prototyping generative AI tools for reporting and storytelling. Led by editorial director Zach Seward, the hybrid crew of engineers, designers, and editors will test internal workflows. Why it matters: Even while locked in a lawsuit with OpenAI, the paper knows it can't ignore the tech—though it insists human journalists will still write the news.
The New York Times just sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, claiming the tech giants copied millions of articles without permission to build ChatGPT and Copilot. The lawsuit argues that the models can recite Times reporting verbatim and act as direct market substitutes, demanding billions in damages and the removal of its work from training datasets.
The New York Times just blocked OpenAI’s GPTBot web crawler via its robots.txt file, cutting off access to its reporting for training AI models. Archive records indicate the block took effect around August 17th. Why it matters: Media publishers are drawing hard lines around their content, with reports indicating the Times is already considering a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI.
The New York Times just updated its terms of service to strictly prohibit scraping its content to train machine learning or AI models. The ban applies to text, images, and metadata, warning that unauthorized crawlers could face penalties. Basically, publishers are drawing a hard line against tech giants training models on their work for free.
Major publishers including IAC and The New York Times are forming a coalition to demand billions in copyright royalties from AI platforms using their content for model training. While tech giants hope to settle with eight-figure payouts, publishers are preparing lawsuits and pushing for legislative action. Why it matters: This escalating copyright dispute could drastically increase the cost of scraping web data for generative AI.
