By Vivian Tran
Publication Date: 2026-09-15 17:23:00
A major legal fight involving The New York Times, OpenAI, and Microsoft is entering a consequential phase, with the outcome likely to influence both the economics of the AI industry and the rules around using published content to build these systems.
Here’s what to know
The copyright case the Times filed in 2023 has now reached the point where each side has laid out its arguments before District Judge Sidney Stein. According to Axios, he is expected to decide whether all or part of the dispute should proceed to trial in 2027.
The Times says OpenAI and Microsoft copied its reporting at large scale and used it to develop products that compete with its journalism. The two companies respond that copyright law permits training large language models on material that is publicly available, and they also argue that factual information is not itself covered by copyright.
OpenAI has relied on two California federal decisions — Kadrey v. Meta and Bartz v. Anthropic…
