USA Today's OpenAI lawsuit explained: what it means for you

A large US newspaper group has taken OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, to court. USA Today Co. and affiliated publishers say OpenAI used their journalism without permission to build its AI, and they are asking for money and for the models themselves to be destroyed.

USA Today Co. and 13 affiliated companies, which publish 19 newspapers, sued seven OpenAI entities in the Southern District of New York. The papers include The Arizona Republic, Detroit Free Press, The Tennessean, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Indianapolis Star. The complaint is dated 8 October 2026 and was reported by Law Commentary on 12 October.

The 79-page complaint makes these main claims:

The publishers point to more than 160,000 entries from their sites in WebText, a dataset OpenAI used. About 83,300 of those are tied to USA Today's website. The examples in the complaint use GPT-5.6.

The publishers are asking for more than $250 million, an injunction (a court order to stop the conduct), profits attributable to the copying, attorneys' fees and a jury trial. They also want the court to order destruction of GPT and other models and training datasets that contain their material, under Section 503(b) of the Copyright Act.

They argue that ChatGPT's commercial use, and its potential to substitute for news content, undermine any fair-use defence. Fair use is a legal idea that allows some copying without permission. The publishers say ChatGPT could cut their traffic and their subscription, advertising and licensing revenue.

Nothing changes in ChatGPT today. The report does not say that any product has been changed, restricted or withdrawn.

The outcome could matter later, because the publishers want models trained on their material destroyed. Whether a court would grant that is not known. OpenAI's response was not in the report, so its position on this case is not yet clear.

For context, OpenAI has defended similar suits on fair-use grounds. The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023 over similar claims.

The plaintiffs have asked the court to treat the case as related to the consolidated OpenAI copyright litigation, which would place it alongside the existing cases. The report did not link the filing itself, and the claims above are the publishers' allegations, not findings by a court.