The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft on Wednesday, December 27, 2023, for using millions of the newspaper’s articles to train their chatbots. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, accuses Microsoft and OpenAI of building generative AI tools by “copying millions of Times’ copyrighted articles.” The suit has also demanded accountability for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” and requests the elimination of any AI tool using the New York Times’ copyrighted material.
Updated October 2026. We added the main developments in the case since it was filed and removed unsourced ChatGPT usage statistics. This article is general information, not legal advice.
The Times said in an emailed statement that journalistic material should be used for commercialization with permission from its owners. They said that after it was discovered that OpenAI and Microsoft Gen AI tools were trained using their content, the news publisher attempted to negotiate with these companies to allow the use of their content for AI tools and receive a fair value for their content in return. However, as per the NYT, Microsoft and OpenAI claimed that it was a “fair use” and did not negotiate with them.
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A representative from OpenAI has responded, saying they respect the rights of content creators, but they are disappointed with this lawsuit filing, and they will come to a mutual decision together with the NYT. However, Microsoft representatives chose not to comment on the situation. Notably, many authors like George R. R. Martin have also sued OpenAI for using their content without their permission to train chatbots. The authors had claimed that ChatGPT was developed by “mass theft” and is an infringement of their intellectual property.
How the case has developed
OpenAI has argued that training AI models on copyrighted material is fair use and that its products do not replace the Times’ journalism. It has also said the Times manipulated ChatGPT to produce examples of verbatim copying, and that some claims are too old under the three-year statute of limitations.
- March 26, 2025: U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein largely denied OpenAI’s and Microsoft’s motions to dismiss, letting the central copyright claims go forward while granting a few narrower motions. Lawsuits from other publishers, including the New York Daily News, are being handled together with the Times’ case before Judge Stein.
- June 2026: The Times filed an amended complaint that dropped its claim that OpenAI contributed to ChatGPT users’ infringement and strengthened its allegation that Microsoft actively encouraged OpenAI’s infringement, Bloomberg Law reported.
- As of October 2026: The case is still pending in federal court in Manhattan, and the Times has asked for summary judgment. No final ruling on whether AI training on its articles is fair use has been made.
