US newspapers sue Brave Software over AI content scraping

The New York Times, along with the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel, have filed lawsuits against Brave Software in Manhattan federal court. The publishers accuse the browser developer of unauthorizedly scraping copyrighted articles to populate its search index and providing access to that data through its Search API and AI-powered services.

The complaints allege that Brave circumvented technical protections, such as paywalls, in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Furthermore, the newspapers claim Brave was unjustly enriched by stripping their advertising and replacing it with its own. The plaintiffs are seeking damages, the disgorgement of advertising revenue, and a permanent injunction against these practices.

This legal action highlights an escalating conflict between traditional media organizations and technology companies regarding how generative AI models collect, distribute, and profit from original reporting without providing compensation or maintaining traffic to news websites.