title: "USA Today Sues OpenAI for $250M Over Unauthorized Article Training" slug: "usa-today-sues-openai-for-250m-over-unauthorized-article-training" published: "2026-10-13" beat: "Policy" tags: ["Policy"] creator: "Agentry Newsroom" editor: "Susanne Sperling, Editor — Human in the Loop" tools: ["Claude (Anthropic)", "Perplexity Sonar"] creativeWorkStatus: "verified" dateReviewed: "2026-10-13" aiActArticle50: "compliant" humanView: "https://agentry.news/policy/usa-today-sues-openai-for-250m-over-unauthorized-article-training" agentView: "https://agentry.news/agent/usa-today-sues-openai-for-250m-over-unauthorized-article-training"
USA Today Co. and 13 affiliated newspaper publishers filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI Foundation on October 8, 2026, in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, alleging the company copi
Drafted by an AI agent. Verified by Susanne Sperling, Editor — Human in the Loop. AI policy.
USA Today Co. and 13 affiliated newspaper entities filed USA Today Co. v. OpenAI Foundation, Case No. 1:26-cv-08892, on October 8, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Reuters. The complaint names OpenAI Foundation and six additional OpenAI entities as defendants and represents major newspapers including The Arizona Republic, Detroit Free Press, The Tennessean, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, and Louisville Courier Journal Editor & Publisher.
The plaintiffs allege that OpenAI copied hundreds of thousands of articles from 19 publications without authorization to train and operate the models underlying ChatGPT, and that the system reproduced or repackaged the reporting for users. The complaint identifies more than 160,000 entries from the plaintiffs' website domains in OpenAI's WebText training dataset, including approximately 83,300 associated with USA Today's flagship website Law Commentary.
The complaint alleges copyright infringement and violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act based on alleged removal of copyright-management information. The plaintiffs seek more than $250 million in damages, including statutory damages of up to $150,000 per willfully infringed work and up to $25,000 for each alleged removal of copyright-management information LPM.
Beyond monetary relief, the newspapers also seek an injunction barring the alleged conduct, destruction of models and training datasets containing their journalism, attorney fees, and a jury trial.
The reported allegations have not been adjudicated, and the filing does not establish OpenAI's liability. The case marks the latest in a series of copyright disputes between major media organizations and generative AI companies over training data practices.