USA TODAY sues OpenAI over training GPT on its news
10/09/2026 — 10/09, 02:20·3 sources (all)·3 reports (all)·In the 2026-10-09 briefing
Key takeaways
- USA TODAY and affiliated newspaper entities sued OpenAI in New York federal court on October 8, alleging the company trained its GPT models…
Background & analysis
On October 8, 2026, USA TODAY Co., Inc. and its affiliated newspaper entities sued OpenAI in federal court in New York. The case is titled USA Today Co., Inc. v. OpenAI Foundation. The plaintiffs allege that OpenAI trained its GPT models on hundreds of thousands of their copyrighted news articles without authorization and repackaged that journalism in chatbot outputs, including through ChatGPT, in a way that substitutes for reading the originals. The suit seeks damages in excess of $250 million.
According to cnBeta, the plaintiffs include USA TODAY and 13 affiliated entities. The complaint cites data showing that the WebText dataset used to train GPT-2 alone contained more than 160,000 records from these outlets, while a 2019 snapshot of the C4 web dataset included over 122 million text tokens tied to these publications, of which more than 23 million came from usatoday.com. The plaintiffs also claim that OpenAI's latest models can generate detailed summaries and restatements closely resembling the original reporting when prompted, and they accuse OpenAI of willful infringement. Beyond damages, they ask the court to order the destruction of models and training datasets built with the relevant media content.
The Verge reported that the filing was submitted on Thursday and that the publisher describes the harm to its outlets as "real and ongoing." The Verge also noted that OpenAI faces copyright lawsuits from other media organizations, including The New York Times.
All three reports agree on the core facts: the suit was filed on October 8 in federal court in New York, the claim is unauthorized use of copyrighted material to train GPT models, and the damages sought exceed $250 million. They differ on how broadly they describe the plaintiffs: Unite.AI refers to USA TODAY and affiliated newspaper entities, The Verge says USA Today Co. along with several local newspapers it owns, and cnBeta specifies USA TODAY and 13 affiliated entities. The case currently stands at the filing stage, with the plaintiffs' requests for damages and for destruction of the relevant models and datasets; no further response from the court or OpenAI has been reported.
AI-generated from 3 reports · updated 59 minutes ago
Latest turnUSA Today's parent company and 13 affiliated entities have sued OpenAI in New York federal court, alleging it trained GPT models on hundreds of thousands of copyrighted news articles without authorization. The plaintiffs are seeking more than $250 million in damages and want the court to order the destruction of the models and datasets trained on their content. The complaint cites more than 160,000 records from these outlets in the WebText dataset used to train GPT-2 alone.
- Heat index
- 284
- All sources
- 3
- All reports
- 3
- First seen
- 3 hours ago
Reports on this story headlines open the original
USA Today's parent company and 13 affiliated entities have sued OpenAI in New York federal court, alleging it trained GPT models on hundreds of thousands of copyrighted news articles without authorization. The plaintiffs are seeking more than $250 million in damages and want the court to order the destruction of the models and datasets trained on their content. The complaint cites more than 160,000 records from these outlets in the WebText dataset used to train GPT-2 alone.
cnBetaAI score 61USA Today Co. and several local newspapers it owns are suing OpenAI, alleging it copied hundreds of thousands of articles to train its AI models, according to The Verge. The filing seeks more than $250 million in damages and claims the unauthorized use has caused real and continuing harm. It adds to a growing list of copyright suits against OpenAI, including one from The New York Times.
The Verge · AIAI score 74USA TODAY and its affiliated newspaper entities sued OpenAI in federal court in New York on October 8, alleging the company trained its GPT models on hundreds of thousands of their copyrighted articles without authorization. The suit says chatbot outputs repackage their journalism in ways that substitute for the originals, and it seeks more than $250 million in damages.
Unite.AIAI score 61
Other stories people are talking about
- Heat index 46OpenAI Launches College Planner and Study Tools for ChatGPT for Teens1 sources
- Heat index 145NewSurgeOpenAI bans two covert influence operations using ChatGPT2 sources
- Heat index 468OpenAI launches GPT-6 with interactive Intelligent UI9 sources
- Heat index 739RisingManus parent Butterfly Effect raises over $500M10 sources
- Heat index 608SurgeGoogle Gives Gemini Agents Their Own Work Accounts7 sources
How is heat calculated?About the methodHide
Heat counts how many independent sources covered a story in the last 48 hours: one source counts once no matter how many posts it published, decaying with a 24-hour half-life. What ranks first is what many people are talking about.
This page aggregates public feeds. Headlines and summaries are machine-organized and remain the property of the original authors; verify important facts at the source. If you believe a headline or summary infringes your rights, email the contact address in the footer with the page URL and basis of your claim, and we will remove or replace it after review.
- Surge
- Discussion rising fast
- New
- First report within 6 hours
- Rising
- Still gathering discussion