July 9, 2026 (Reuters) – A coalition of major newspapers led by The New York Times and New York Daily News filed a motion Thursday in Manhattan federal court seeking sanctions against OpenAI, alleging the artificial intelligence company deliberately misrepresented its capabilities regarding copyrighted material used in AI model training.
The filing alleges OpenAI told the court it lacked the technical ability to search its systems for plaintiffs’ copyrighted content, while simultaneously conducting such searches internally ‘even before the first News Plaintiff filed suit.’ The newspapers further claim OpenAI deleted or rendered inaccessible billions of relevant ChatGPT conversation logs that could serve as evidence in the copyright infringement case.
‘For over two years, OpenAI lied to The Times, The Daily News Plaintiffs, the public, and the court,’ stated Ian Crosby, lead attorney for The New York Times. ‘It claimed searching ChatGPT outputs for copies of The Times’ and the Daily News Plaintiffs’ content was infeasible, burdensome, and invasive of users’ privacy — while at the same time concealing that it had already done such searches.’
The plaintiffs are requesting the court impose sanctions including an award of attorneys’ fees and a formal finding that OpenAI’s chat logs demonstrate misuse of their copyrighted works in training its large language models, particularly the technology behind ChatGPT.
OpenAI has previously resisted sharing conversation logs, arguing that doing so would violate user privacy protections. A company spokesperson dismissed the allegations as ‘blatantly false,’ stating: ‘As the Times’ case weakens and they’ve been forced to drop claims against us, they’re persisting with their efforts to invade the privacy of people who have nothing to do with this case, including by making these blatantly false allegations.’
The lawsuit, initially filed by The New York Times in 2023, accuses OpenAI and its primary financial backer Microsoft of using millions of the newspaper’s articles without authorization to train the AI models powering ChatGPT. Last month, The Times amended its complaint to drop a secondary copyright infringement claim while maintaining its core allegations.
This legal action represents one of numerous cases brought by copyright holders — including authors, visual artists, and music labels — against AI developers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta Platforms. Plaintiffs in these cases allege unauthorized use of their creative works to train generative artificial intelligence systems, constituting copyright infringement under U.S. law.
(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; edited by David Gaffen and David Gregorio)
