The New York Times and several other news organisations have filed a motion for sanctions against OpenAI, accusing the AI company of concealing for more than two years that it could search the training datasets and output logs behind its models. The outlets allege that OpenAI initially claimed it was unable to access such data, only for that account to unravel during discovery, and that the company also deleted logs in breach of the court's preservation orders. The dispute matters because it goes to the heart of the copyright battle between publishers and generative AI firms, raising the stakes from a fair-use argument to accusations of deliberate obstruction and misconduct.

The 52-page motion, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, lists the Times, the Daily News, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Intercept and Ziff Davis as plaintiffs. The outlets say OpenAI's alleged deception came to light after a February deposition of Vinnie Monaco, who leads the company's privacy engineering, and they are asking the court to find that OpenAI made false claims, to award attorneys' fees and to impose further penalties as a deterrent. OpenAI rejected the allegations as "blatantly false" and framed them as an attempt to invade users' privacy, saying it would keep defending fair use. The Times, which first sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, has spent more than $28 million on AI-related litigation, including $4.2 million in the first quarter of 2026, even as it strikes licensing deals such as one with Amazon.