USA TODAY Sues OpenAI Over Copyrighted News Content in AI Training

USA TODAY Co., Inc. and its affiliated newspaper entities sued OpenAI in federal court in New York on October 8, 2026, alleging the company trained its GPT models on hundreds of thousands of their copyrighted articles without authorization and repackaged their journalism in chatbot outputs that substitute for the originals. The suit seeks damages in excess of $250 million.

The case, USA Today Co., Inc. v. OpenAI Foundation, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by attorney Steven Lieberman of Rothwell, Figg, Ernst & Manbeck. The complaint was entered on October 8, 2026, accompanied by an exhibit of copyright registrations and a second exhibit of GPT-5.6 output examples, according to the court docket.

Same-day docket entries include a civil cover sheet, a copyright notice form, a notice of appearance, and a request for issuance of summons. A statement of relatedness filed the same day asks that the action be treated as related to the consolidated OpenAI copyright infringement litigation already pending in the same court. The complaint states that the plaintiffs join a…