Editorial illustration for USA Today sues OpenAI, seeking over USD 250 million in damages
USA Today Sues OpenAI for $250M Over Article Training
USA Today sues OpenAI, seeking over USD 250 million in damages
USA Today Co. filed suit against OpenAI on Thursday, accusing the company of copying "hundreds of thousands" of its articles to train ChatGPT and other models without permission or payment. The filing, first reported by Reuters, names the parent company behind USA Today along with local papers like The Tennessean, Indy Star, The Columbus Dispatch, and The Oklahoman. The publisher wants more than $250 million in damages, arguing OpenAI's conduct has caused "real and continuing" harm to its newsrooms.
The lawsuit puts USA Today Co. in a growing line of media companies taking OpenAI to court. The New York Times sued first, and since then OpenAI has faced similar claims from The Intercept, Ziff Davis (owner of CNET), CBC/Radio-Canada, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Merriam-Webster, The Seattle Times, and a group of nearly 400 local newspapers.
USA Today's complaint frames the dispute in blunt terms, tying OpenAI's business model directly to unlicensed use of copyrighted journalism. OpenAI hasn't responded to the suit publicly. The company now faces mounting legal pressure from multiple directions over how it built the datasets behind its most profitable products.
“OpenAI’s commercial success rests on large-scale copyright infringement,” USA Today Co.’s lawsuit claims. It alleges that OpenAI never asked for permission to use its content, instead “took” USA Today’s content to “build products worth hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Why this matters
For anyone building products on top of OpenAI's models, this lawsuit adds to a growing pile of legal exposure that isn't going away. USA Today's parent company joins The New York Times, several other newspaper chains, and authors' groups who've already filed similar claims. Each new suit raises the question of how much training data OpenAI will eventually have to license, pay for, or strip out entirely, and what that means for model quality or cost down the line.
We'd watch two things here. First, whether courts start treating these cases as a pattern rather than isolated disputes, which could speed up settlements or force OpenAI into broader licensing deals with publishers. Second, the dollar figures: $250 million from one mid-sized publisher suggests plaintiffs are setting a price floor for what they think their archives are worth.
If that number holds up or grows in court, it changes the calculus for every AI company that scraped news content without asking first, not just OpenAI. Founders training models on public web data should be paying attention to how this one resolves.
Related Reading
Browse all OpenAI news →
Open Source D&B rebuilds 642 million‑business database after AI agents hit limits
Open Source Box CEO Aaron Levie Says AI Will Drive "Biggest Cybersecurity Upgrade
Open Source Study: 6.7% of Deepfake Requests on Hugging Face Targeted Children
Related Topic OpenAI researcher quits, citing distrust over ad‑driven engagement metrics
LLMs & Generative AI
Related Topic OpenAI launches GPT-Image 1.5 with precise editing for enterprise visuals
LLMs & Generative AI
From Archives Natura’s USD 99 ring puts AI agents on your finger
From Archives Perplexity's 9B AI Model Scores 92.4% on MADQA Benchmark
From Archives OpenAI disputes firings were over safety concerns after misconduct probe
Research & Benchmarks
From Archives OpenAI Revenue Near USD 50B, Not USD 70B as Previously Reported
Business & Startups
Common Questions Answered
What specific publications are named in USA Today's lawsuit against OpenAI?
USA Today Co.'s lawsuit names the parent company behind USA Today along with several local newspapers including The Tennessean, Indy Star, The Columbus Dispatch, and The Oklahoman. All of these publications are part of the same parent company filing the suit against OpenAI for unauthorized use of their content.
How much is USA Today seeking in damages from OpenAI?
USA Today Co. is seeking over $250 million in damages from OpenAI. The publisher argues that OpenAI's use of hundreds of thousands of its articles without permission or payment has caused real and continuing harm to its newsroom operations.
What is USA Today's main allegation regarding OpenAI's use of its content?
USA Today alleges that OpenAI engaged in large-scale copyright infringement by copying hundreds of thousands of articles to train ChatGPT and other models without asking for permission or providing payment. The lawsuit claims OpenAI took USA Today's content to build products worth hundreds of billions of dollars without compensating the publisher.
What other publishers and groups have filed similar lawsuits against OpenAI?
USA Today joins The New York Times, several other newspaper chains, and authors' groups who have already filed similar copyright infringement claims against OpenAI. This growing pile of legal actions raises questions about how much training data OpenAI will eventually need to license or pay for.
What potential implications could these lawsuits have for OpenAI's model training and costs?
The accumulating lawsuits raise questions about how much training data OpenAI will eventually have to license, pay for, or remove entirely from its models. These legal requirements could significantly impact model quality or increase operational costs for OpenAI and companies building products on top of its models.
Further Reading
- USA Today Sues OpenAI For Over $250 Million, Alleging Willful Copyright Infringement - Forbes
- USA TODAY Sues OpenAI Over Copyrighted News Content in AI Training - Unite.AI
- 35 US Newspaper Publishers Sue OpenAI, Microsoft Over Alleged Copyright Infringement - MediaNama
- News Outlets Ask Court to Ignore DOJ View in AI Copyright Suit - Bloomberg Law
- Court Filings in A.I. Suit Invoke Copyright Law, Culture and Economics - The New York Times
