Threat assessment: elevated. USA Today Co. is suing OpenAI for more than $250 million. The publisher claims OpenAI copied “hundreds of thousands” of its articles to train its AI models without asking. The Verge AI reports the suit was filed Thursday, after Reuters first broke the story. OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.
The complaint is direct. “OpenAI’s commercial success rests on large-scale copyright infringement,” it reads. According to the filing, OpenAI never asked for permission. It “took” the publisher’s content to “build products worth hundreds of billions of dollars,” and that use has done “real and continuing” harm to its outlets.
📍 Situation Report
Here’s what’s on the table:
- Plaintiff: USA Today Co., the company formerly known as Gannett and one of the largest newspaper chains in the US.
- Co-plaintiffs: Its local papers, including The Tennessean, Indy Star, The Columbus Dispatch, The Oklahoman and several others.
- Defendant: OpenAI.
- Allegation: Unauthorized copying of hundreds of thousands of articles for model training.
- Ask: Damages of more than $250 million.
The local outlets are what stand out. This isn’t one national brand protecting its archive. The complaint covers a whole network of regional newsrooms, and those are the papers that have been hit hardest by falling ad revenue and shrinking traffic.
🗺️ Terrain: How We Got Here
USA Today is joining a long line of plaintiffs. The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in late 2023. A group of Alden Global Capital papers, led by the New York Daily News, followed in 2024. Digital outlets like The Intercept and Raw Story filed their own suits. Ziff Davis sued in 2025.
At the same time, plenty of publishers went the other way and signed licensing deals. The Associated Press, Axel Springer, the Financial Times, News Corp and Condé Nast all agreed to paid partnerships with OpenAI. Basically, every publisher has picked one of two options: get paid now, or sue later.
USA Today Co. has now picked the courtroom, at least when it comes to OpenAI. That’s notable because the company hasn’t refused to work with AI firms. It has made content deals with other AI players. This lawsuit reads as a pricing dispute fought with copyright law.
⚠️ Why It Matters
This is significant for three reasons:
- The legal pressure keeps piling up. Every new suit makes it harder for OpenAI to argue that a few outliers are holding out. A major newspaper chain plus its local papers signals that the industry broadly sees training data as something it should be paid for.
- The numbers are getting real. A $250 million demand from a single publisher is a big figure. Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement with book authors in 2025 showed these claims can turn into actual checks, not just headlines.
- Fair use is still unsettled. Courts haven’t given a clear, final answer on whether training on copyrighted news counts as fair use. Until they do, AI companies carry legal exposure that’s hard to price.
🎯 Tactical Implications
For practitioners and businesses building on AI, here’s what to watch:
- Expect more licensing deals. Lawsuits are leverage. They usually push both sides toward a paid agreement, and this one probably ends the same way.
- Data provenance matters more. If you’re training or fine-tuning models, know where your data comes from. “It was on the open web” is looking weaker as a legal defense.
- AI costs could rise. Licensing fees and settlements go on the balance sheet, and some of that cost will eventually reach API pricing and subscriptions.
- Local news is now part of the fight. Regional outlets have usually had little say in AI deals. This suit gives them a seat at the table.
🔭 Outlook
OpenAI will likely fight this the way it has fought the others, by arguing fair use and pointing to its existing publisher partnerships. Don’t expect a quick verdict. These cases move slowly, and most end in a settlement or a licensing deal, not a landmark ruling.
Still, the overall direction is clear. The days when AI companies could use the internet’s archives for free are ending, and publishers are working out the price in court. You can find more details in The Verge AI’s original report.