More than a dozen news organizations, including The New York Times and the Daily News, have asked a federal judge in Manhattan to impose sanctions on OpenAI. This move escalates a landmark copyright infringement legal fight over how ChatGPT was trained on copyrighted news content, a battle that could shape the future of a struggling news industry.
The publishers allege that OpenAI has been hiding and destroying evidence central to the case. According to a court filing, OpenAI chose obstruction over handing over datasets, withholding tools and ChatGPT logs that could identify copyrighted journalism in the AI's outputs.
The news firms argue that this withheld evidence is crucial to the trial. As the legal battle continues, costs associated with the copyright dispute have topped $28 million.