News groups seek sanctions against OpenAI in copyright case

A group of major news organizations, led by The New York Times, has asked a federal judge to sanction OpenAI, accusing the artificial intelligence company of lying to the court for years and concealing evidence central to a landmark copyright lawsuit. The motion, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, escalates a high-stakes legal battle over whether AI firms can legally train their systems on copyrighted news articles.

The plaintiffs, which also include the New York Daily News, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and digital publisher Ziff Davis, allege OpenAI engaged in "discovery misconduct" by falsely claiming it lacked the technical ability to search its vast datasets and ChatGPT user logs for their copyrighted material. According to the filing, these claims were contradicted during a court-ordered deposition of OpenAI privacy engineer Vincent "Vinnie" Monaco in April. Monaco reportedly testified that the company had, in fact, conducted internal searches for copyrighted journalism both before and after the litigation began, and had amassed a database of approximately 78 million de-identified ChatGPT conversations to assess potential infringement.