The New York Times is escalating its copyright fight against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that Microsoft didn’t just facilitate AI training on its articles — it actively encouraged the theft by building a custom supercomputer for OpenAI.
In a heavily redacted court filing Thursday, the NYT asked permission to amend its complaint to incorporate new evidence and align with recent legal precedent. The Supreme Court’s ruling in a case between Sony and Cox Communications, which raised the bar for proving contributory infringement, forced the paper to sharpen its arguments.
Under that new standard, plaintiffs must show that defendants intentionally acted to induce illegal conduct. The NYT argues that’s exactly what Microsoft did by constructing one of the world’s most powerful supercomputing systems specifically to train on copyrighted material at scale.
NYT spokesperson Graham James said the amended complaint “further strengthens our case, clarifying our claim of contributory infringement.” The paper also dropped two weaker claims to focus its strongest arguments.
Microsoft dismissed the filing as “a last-ditch effort by the plaintiff to save its claim from unfavorable precedent set in other recent rulings.”
Meanwhile the core allegation hasn’t changed since the NYT first sued OpenAI in 2023: that Microsoft and OpenAI stole millions of copyrighted works to build competing products. The outcome could reshape how AI training data is handled across the industry.
