On October 8, 2026, USA TODAY Co., Inc. and 13 affiliated entities filed a copyright complaint against seven OpenAI entities in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs say they represent content from 19 publications and allege unauthorized copying during content acquisition and model training, as well as reproduction or repackaging in product outputs, including ChatGPT.
What the complaint alleges
The complaint describes separate alleged uses of the publications’ journalism. First, the plaintiffs allege that OpenAI entities copied their content while acquiring material and training models. They also allege that product outputs reproduced or repackaged their reporting.
A separate claim concerns copyright-management information: the plaintiffs allege that identifying details such as authors’ names, publication titles and copyright notices were removed. These are claims made in the complaint.
The companies and publications involved
The complaint names 14 corporate plaintiffs: USA TODAY Co., Inc. and 13 affiliated entities. The plaintiffs say those entities collectively represent copyrights in content from 19 publications. Seven OpenAI entities are named as defendants.
What the plaintiffs are asking for
The plaintiffs seek more than $250 million in damages. They also ask for a permanent injunction, destruction of GPT or other large language models and training sets incorporating their content, and a jury trial.
