NYT-led group asks court to sanction OpenAI in US copyright dispute

The news firms allege the ChatGPT maker is hiding evidence important to what could be a landmark copyright infringement trial.The New York Times, the Daily News and other US media outlets are asking a United States federal judge to impose sanctions on OpenAI, escalating a fight over Artificial Intelligence (AI) and copyright that could shape the future of a struggling news industry.The newspapers allege the ChatGPT maker is hiding evidence important to what could be a landmark copyright infringement trial over how OpenAI and its business partner, Microsoft, built their AI technologies using millions of news articles. At issue is whether AI chatbots are unfairly competing as an information source, siphoning off web traffic without doing the journalistic work involved in gathering the news.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4FIFA World Cup 2026: Ranking the eight quarterfinalists’ chances of glorylist 2 of 4What happened to the beautiful game?list 3 of 4Why the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve matters amid US-Iran tensionslist 4 of 4Canadian PM visits Saudi Arabia to strengthen energy, mining partnershipsend of listA filing on Thursday in a Manhattan federal courthouse alleges OpenAI “chose obstruction” over releasing data sets and ChatGPT logs that could show how the AI system used copyrighted news content. The plaintiffs are asking the judge to penalise the company for “discovery misconduct” that could distort evidence, saying a recent deposition of an OpenAI employee contradicts the company’s earlier claims.New York Daily News attorney Steven Lieberman said OpenAI has been “making misrepresentations” for two years about its ability to search for copyrighted content in its AI training datasets and logs.“This motion asks the court to punish OpenAI for hiding and destroying evidence showing how ChatGPT was trained on stolen journalism,” said Lieberman, who represents the Daily News and seven of its sister papers.OpenAI has previously argued that turning over ChatGPT conversation logs would risk violating users’ privacy.