A coalition of news publishers, including The New York Times and Ziff Davis, filed a motion for sanctions against OpenAI in federal court on Thursday, accusing the company of concealing its technical ability to search training datasets and output logs for more than two years while the parties wrangled over discovery. The 52-page filing, submitted in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, asks the court to penalize OpenAI for making false claims and deleting logs in violation of preservation orders - a move that could reshape the evidentiary landscape of the high-stakes copyright litigation.
The plaintiffs - the Times, the Daily News, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Intercept, and Ziff Davis - say OpenAI's deception surfaced only during a February deposition of Vinnie Monaco, the company's head of privacy engineering. In that session, Monaco revealed that OpenAI had already searched training data and output logs, despite the company's earlier assertions that such searches were infeasible. The publishers also allege that OpenAI deleted logs that the court had ordered it to preserve.
What the motion alleges
"Instead of just producing that evidence at the start of the case and focusing on the merits of its fair use defense, OpenAI chose obstruction," the news organizations wrote through their attorneys. The motion requests that the court formally recognize the company's false claims and log deletions, award attorneys' fees, and impose any additional punishment the court deems appropriate. "Each of the remedies requested is an appropriate exercise of this Court's inherent authority and necessary both in response to OpenAI's misconduct and as a deterrent to those who might contemplate following their example," the filing states.
Crosby, lead attorney for the New York Times, said in a statement that OpenAI "lied to The Times, The Daily News Plaintiffs, the public, and the court." He added: "It claimed searching ChatGPT outputs for copies of The Times' and the Daily News Plaintiffs' content was infeasible, burdensome, and invasive of users' privacy - while at the same time concealing that it had already done such searches. If OpenAI genuinely believed that copying our clients' journalism was fair and legal, it wouldn't have hid the truth about having done it."
OpenAI pushes back on privacy grounds
An OpenAI spokesperson said the Times was "persisting with their efforts to invade the privacy of people who have nothing to do with this case, including by making these blatantly false allegations." The spokesperson added that the company would "continue defending our users' privacy and the long-established principles of fair use."
The Times first sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, becoming the first major news organization to bring a copyright action against a generative AI developer. The Daily News, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and Ziff Davis filed their own suits in 2024. The Times has spent more than $28 million on litigation costs against AI companies, with $4.2 million recorded during the first financial quarter of 2026. The sanctions motion is the latest escalation in a legal battle that has drawn intense scrutiny from the AI for Legal community, as the outcome will likely influence discovery obligations and preservation duties in AI-related copyright disputes.
The broader copyright and licensing picture
Many news outlets are navigating a dual-track strategy: defending their copyrighted work while also exploring licensing deals as AI-powered summaries and chatbots siphon digital traffic. The Times, which has also sued AI company Perplexity for similar alleged infringement, struck a content-licensing agreement with Amazon for "AI-related uses" last year and is developing its own AI tools inside the newsroom. The tensions between protecting intellectual property and monetizing it through partnerships remain a central challenge for publishers.
Why this matters for legal professionals
For in-house counsel, litigators, and discovery practitioners, the motion highlights the practical consequences of a defendant's discovery conduct in complex technology cases. Allegations of concealed capabilities and deleted logs cut to the heart of the duty to preserve evidence and the obligation to provide truthful responses. If the court finds that OpenAI violated preservation orders, the sanctions could range from adverse inference instructions to case-dispositive penalties, setting a precedent for how courts handle discovery disputes in AI litigation. The motion also underscores the growing importance of forensic scrutiny of AI training data and output logs - a technical area that demands close collaboration between legal teams and data engineers.
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