USA Today’s parent company sued OpenAI on Thursday, accusing the AI lab of copying hundreds of thousands of its news articles to train ChatGPT — and asking a Manhattan federal court for more than $250 million in damages.
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York as USA Today Co. v. OpenAI Foundation (No. 1:26-cv-08892), says OpenAI used articles from 19 publications to develop the technology behind ChatGPT without permission. It asks for damages “in excess of $250 million” and a court order blocking the alleged infringement.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The complaint, in three claims
The suit raises three claims: direct copyright infringement, vicarious infringement, and removal of copyright management information under DMCA Section 1202 — the same three claims that remain in The New York Times’ lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, which is also playing out in Manhattan. According to Unite.AI’s review of the court docket, the filing was accompanied by an exhibit of copyright registrations and a second exhibit of GPT-5.6 output examples, and it asks to be treated as related to the consolidated OpenAI copyright litigation already pending in the same court — litigation that has reached the summary judgment phase.
The numbers get big fast. Under the statutory framework the complaint cites, plaintiffs can recover up to $150,000 for each willful infringement, plus up to $25,000 per violation for the removal of copyright management information. With hundreds of thousands of articles at issue, that’s the arithmetic behind the $250 million figure.
The complaint also alleges that internal OpenAI communications show the company deliberately targeted news content to train its consumer products, according to Bloomberg Law’s account of the filing.
Nineteen publications, one licensing fight
The named publications read like a tour of American local news: USA TODAY, The Tennessean, the Detroit Free Press, The Arizona Republic, The Indianapolis Star, The Columbus Dispatch, and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, among others. USA Today Co. says it owns more than 200 local media organizations in total — which is why this case hits differently from the author lawsuits. It’s not one famous writer’s books; it’s the daily output of hundreds of newsrooms.
The core argument is about substitution. ChatGPT doesn’t just train on the articles — the complaint says it reproduces or summarizes them for users in ways that mean readers never click through to the original publications. The journalism becomes an answer in a chatbot, and the newsroom that paid for the reporting gets nothing.
A courtroom traffic jam
Nobody should mistake this for a one-off. USA Today joins what Reuters calls dozens of high-stakes copyright lawsuits against OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta over AI training data. The New York Times is already fighting OpenAI and Microsoft in the same courthouse. Authors, Ziff Davis, the Center for Investigative Reporting, Raw Story, The Intercept, U.S. News & World Report and Encyclopaedia Britannica have all filed their own versions.
And courts are starting to set prices. Earlier this year, a federal judge in San Francisco ordered Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion to settle an authors’ lawsuit over pirated books used to train Claude. That kind of number changes the conversation from “is this legal” to “what does it cost.”
The tech industry’s answer, so far, is fair use. OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic have argued that their systems transform copyrighted material into something new — and that training a model isn’t the same as republishing a story. Whether that defense survives summary judgment in New York will decide more than one company’s legal bills.
Why USA Today sues OpenAI: the business-model question
The USA Today suit is the one that makes the business model question concrete. OpenAI is reportedly negotiating a private fundraising round that could value it at $1.4 trillion, per the Financial Times, while Reuters has noted both OpenAI and Anthropic are potentially heading toward IPOs. At that scale, “training data is free” stops being a defensible position the moment courts assign it a nine-figure price tag.
The local-news angle cuts the other way too. Big national outlets can negotiate licensing deals; 200 local newsrooms can’t. If chatbots keep answering questions with repackaged reporting while the papers that produced it keep laying off staff, the complaint’s real warning isn’t about damages — it’s about where the journalism comes from in five years.
Frequently asked questions
What is USA Today accusing OpenAI of? USA Today Co. alleges OpenAI copied hundreds of thousands of articles from 19 of its publications to train the models behind ChatGPT, and that the chatbot repackages that reporting in ways that substitute for visiting the original news sites.
Which publications are named in the lawsuit? The complaint names 19 publications, including USA TODAY, The Tennessean, the Detroit Free Press, The Arizona Republic, The Indianapolis Star, The Columbus Dispatch and The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
How much is USA Today seeking from OpenAI? The complaint asks for damages in excess of $250 million, plus a court order blocking OpenAI’s alleged use of the company’s copyrighted material. Federal law allows up to $150,000 per willful infringement.
What is OpenAI’s defense in copyright cases like this? OpenAI and other AI companies have argued their systems make fair use of copyrighted material by transforming it into something new. The company did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment on the USA Today filing.
Sources: Reuters, Bloomberg Law, Forbes/TV News Check, Unite.AI.