News Outlets Seek Sanctions, Citing OpenAI's '2 Years of Misrepresentations'

For legal professionals, this sanctions motion represents a pivotal procedural moment. If the court finds that OpenAI systematically obstructed discovery—by concealing datasets and providing contradictory deposition testimony—it could impose adverse inference sanctions, severely damaging the AI company's defense. The motion tests the boundaries of discovery obligations in the age of opaque black-box algorithms and user-privacy claims, setting precedent for all future AI copyright litigation.

A critical escalation in the landmark copyright battle between Big Tech and the news industry unfolded on July 9, 2026, as The New York Times, the Daily News, and other media outlets filed a motion for sanctions against OpenAI in a Manhattan federal court. The plaintiffs allege that the maker of ChatGPT has engaged in 'discovery misconduct'—hiding and destroying evidence that could prove the AI system was trained on millions of copyrighted news articles without permission. This procedural move, while technical, could reshape not only the impending trial but also the broader legal framework governing how AI companies use publicly available content.

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If the court finds that OpenAI systematically obstructed discovery—by concealing datasets and providing contradictory deposition testimony—it could impose adverse inference sanctions, severely damaging the AI company's defense.

The sanctions motion centers on what the news organizations describe as a two-year pattern of 'misrepresentations' by OpenAI regarding its ability to search for copyrighted material within its training datasets and ChatGPT interaction logs. Steven Lieberman, attorney for the Daily News and seven of its sister papers, explicitly stated that the motion asks the court to 'punish OpenAI for hiding and destroying evidence showing how ChatGPT was trained on stolen journalism.' This language signals a dramatic breakdown in the discovery process, where parties are required to share relevant evidence. The plaintiffs claim that the recent deposition of an OpenAI employee directly contradicts earlier company assertions about the technical feasibility of identifying copyrighted content in the vast data stores used to build its models.

At stake in the underlying lawsuit is whether generative AI chatbots unfairly compete with traditional journalism by siphoning off web traffic—effectively aggregating and repurposing journalistic work without paying for it. The case, with Microsoft also named as a business partner that helped build the AI technologies, could determine the future economic model for news gathering in an era where AI-generated summaries frequently replace direct link-throughs to original sources. The news industry, already reeling from years of declining ad revenues and shrinking newsrooms, views this as an existential fight. If AI models can freely ingest and remix copyrighted content, the incentive to produce original reporting diminishes.

OpenAI has pushed back sharply. Spokesperson Drew Pusateri issued a statement accusing the plaintiffs of attempting to 'invade the privacy of people who have nothing to do with this case' and asserting that the Times' case is weakening. The company frames its limitations on sharing ChatGPT logs as a necessary user-privacy safeguard, not obstruction. OpenAI maintains that its training falls under the 'long-established principles of fair use,' a doctrine that allows limited use of copyrighted material for transformative purposes. The tension between privacy rights and the need for transparency in AI training is a recurring theme; if courts compel OpenAI to disclose logs, it could set a precedent that forces all AI developers to choose between user confidentiality and legal compliance.