The New York Times updated its copyright lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, alleging that Microsoft built a supercomputer specifically designed to train AI on copyrighted works, including NYT articles, without permission.
<p>In a heavily redacted <a href="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/NYT-v-OpenAI-Third-Amended-Complaint-6-25-26.pdf">court filing</a> Thursday, The New York Times proposed to amend its copyright complaint against OpenAI and Microsoft to clarify a claim and allege that Microsoft actively encouraged OpenAI to steal NYT works by building a bespoke supercomputing system ranked among the most powerful in the world.</p>
<p>NYT's motion comes after the <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/supreme-court-rejects-sonys-attempt-to-kick-music-pirates-off-the-internet/">Supreme Court sided with Cox Communications</a> in a case where Sony tried and failed to claim that Cox was contributing to music piracy as an Internet service provider, which set a new standard for contributory infringement. Moving forward, plaintiffs will have to prove that parties intentionally acted to induce illegal conduct. Recognizing that the legal precedent has changed, the NYT now wants to amend its complaint to align its contributory infringement claim against Microsoft with that new standard.</p>
<p>“Today, we asked the court for permission to file an amended complaint that further strengthens our case, clarifying our claim of contributory infringement against Microsoft based on new law and new evidence uncovered during discovery,” Graham James, an NYT spokesperson, said in a statement provided to Ars.</p><p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/microsoft-built-supercomputer-to-help-openai-infringe-copyrights-nyt-alleged/">Read full article</a></p>
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# NYT slams Microsoft for building copyright-infringing supercomputer for OpenAI
Source: [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/microsoft-built-supercomputer-to-help-openai-infringe-copyrights-nyt-alleged/](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/microsoft-built-supercomputer-to-help-openai-infringe-copyrights-nyt-alleged/)
## NYT targets Microsoft supercomputer
In 2023, the NYT became the first major publisher to sue OpenAI\. The prominent newspaper alleged that ChatGPT was illegally trained on its articles, infringed on its copyrights by outputting articles verbatim, and caused market harms by positioning ChatGPT as a substitute for a NYT subscription, as well as reputational harms by falsely attributing claims to NYT reporting\. Additionally, ChatGPT outputs summarizing Wirecutter reviews robbed writers of commissions from lost clicks on affiliate links, the NYT alleged\.
In the initial complaint, the NYT discussed Microsoft’s supercomputing systems as if they were providing generic cloud computing services\. The updated complaint seeks to specify that the supercomputer was tailor\-made to help OpenAI infringe and allege that it was built for the explicit purpose of training AI on copyrighted works without permission\. And as the NYT alleged, its articles were more heavily weighted by this system, as both firms hoped to train models on the highest\-quality journalism possible, so that level of writing could be confidently mimicked in outputs\.
By building this “unusually complex” machine, Microsoft not only helped select the works that were infringed but also provided a means to seize copyrighted works without permission, the NYT alleged\.
“Microsoft specifically designed it for the purpose of using essentially the whole Internet—curated to disproportionately feature Times Works—to train the most capable LLM in history,” the NYT alleged\.
And now it’s allegedly unfairly profiting\.
“Microsoft’s deployment of Times\-trained LLMs throughout its product line helped boost its market capitalization by a trillion dollars in the past year alone,” the NYT alleged\.
## Model outputs show market harms, NYT alleged
For the NYT, outputs shared during discovery—including a[huge chunk of users’ ChatGPT sessions](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/11/openai-fights-order-to-hand-over-20-million-private-chatgpt-conversations/)—remain some of the strongest evidence that OpenAI and Microsoft built tools that allegedly replaced the NYT by producing near\-verbatim excerpts of its copyrighted works\.
In some cases, users told ChatGPT they were trying to skirt paywalls and were able to see significant chunks of articles by requesting to see the “next paragraph\.” In other cases, “models simply spit out several paragraphs” without such finagling\. To prove market harms caused by substitution, they shared examples in their complaints of side\-by\-side comparisons, as well as screenshots of allegedly infringing outputs:
OpenAI responds to The New York Times lawsuit filed December 27, claiming the NYT manipulated prompts to induce content regurgitation and that negotiations had been progressing constructively before the surprise legal action. OpenAI disputes the characterization that NYT content meaningfully contributed to model training and defends its practices around content reproduction.
35 newspaper publishers across the US have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the companies scraped their copyrighted and paywalled content without permission to train ChatGPT, harming local journalism.
Microsoft, at its Build conference, announced a suite of new AI products and in-house reasoning models, signaling its intent to compete directly with OpenAI and other top AI labs after effectively separating from its long-time partner.
OpenAI is publicly opposing a New York Times legal demand for 20 million user ChatGPT conversations, arguing it violates user privacy and breaks security practices. The company commits to strengthening privacy protections including client-side encryption and reiterates its resistance to similar previous demands.