New York Times and three papers sue Brave over AI scraping

The New York Times, the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel have filed lawsuits against Brave Software, alleging the company scrapes their journalism and sells access to it to AI firms. The cases were filed in federal court in Manhattan.

The lawsuits focus on Brave’s search index and the data it provides to AI developers. The three newspapers claim Brave acts as a 'burglar' that misappropriates content and an 'AI fence' that sells stolen material.

Steven Lieberman, attorney for the MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing, said in a statement: 'AI giants are now desperate to avoid getting caught red-handed stealing news from publishers, so Brave Software is selling them a back door to the journalism they know they have no right to. Buying stolen goods secondhand doesn’t make them legitimate. Brave must be held responsible for laundering pirated reporting for the AI industry.'

The New York Times spokesperson said the company had previously asked Brave to stop using its journalism, but the browser maker ignored those requests. The lawsuits include five claims: direct, contributory and vicarious copyright infringement, circumvention of technical protections under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and unjust enrichment under New York law.

At the center of the lawsuits is Brave’s search index, which contains over 30 billion web pages. Publishers argue Brave has never disclosed the name of the crawler used to collect this data, making it difficult to block automated scraping.

Brave sells access to the index through its Search API, which is used by five major AI companies: Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere. The company’s marketing describes the API’s use in training large language models.

The lawsuits also allege that Brave’s AI search features reproduce the publishers’ work, including exact passages and detailed summaries. Additionally, the Paywall blocker feature allows users to bypass subscription content without logging in.

Publishers argue Brave profits from advertising by blocking publishers’ ads while selling its own. They claim this allows Brave to benefit from journalism without sharing revenue with content creators.

The lawsuits also highlight concerns over AI search reducing referral traffic to publishers’ websites. A study cited by the newspapers found AI crawlers generate 95.7% less referral traffic than traditional search engines.

The three Alden-owned papers are seeking damages, repayment of profits, and a permanent injunction. Brave reported more than $100 million in revenue in 2025 and has around 130 million monthly users, according to the complaints.

The Times and the Alden-owned newspapers have also filed separate copyright lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft.