New York Times sues Brave over AI content scraping

The Times and three other papers say Brave copied their journalism and sold access to it to AI companies such as Anthropic, Perplexity and xAI.

On November 2, The New York Times sued Brave Software in federal court in Manhattan, and the Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel filed a similar suit. They say the browser maker copied their articles without paying and sold access to them to AI companies, including Anthropic, Perplexity and xAI.

Key facts

The New York Times filed a copyright lawsuit against Brave Software on Monday, November 2, 2026, in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The Daily News, the Chicago Tribune and the Orlando Sentinel filed a similar suit in the same court on the same day.
The complaints say Brave scraped the papers’ articles and gave paid access to its index to AI companies, naming Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere. Those companies are not defendants.
The Times asks for an injunction and damages. Brave did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

What happened

Brave, founded in 2015, makes a privacy focused web browser and runs its own search index. According to TechCrunch, the Times describes the company as a “supplier, dealer, and distributor of stolen copyrighted content” for AI firms, and calls it an AI “fence” that sells stolen material to third parties.

The complaints say Brave built an index of more than 30 billion web pages with a crawler that it does not identify, so publishers have no way to block it. Heise reports that, according to the filings, AI companies paid for access to this index to get fresh online content, which they used to train models or to answer specific questions from their users. The papers say Brave never paid them for copying, reproducing or distributing their work.

The suits also target the browser itself. They point to a feature that lets readers get past paywalls, and to Brave’s practice of blocking publishers’ ads while selling its own. Heise lists the case numbers as 1:26-CV-09549 for the Times and 1:26-CV-09554 for the Daily News.

A Times spokesperson told Reuters, as quoted by heise, that the paper supports ethical and responsible AI but that Brave broke copyright law and ignored repeated requests to stop. The Times is already in court with OpenAI and Microsoft over training data, a case it filed at the end of 2023, and it has also sued Perplexity.

Why it matters

Most copyright fights over AI so far have targeted the model makers. This one goes after a company in the middle: a search index that, the papers say, sells fresh web content to the companies building chatbots. If the court agrees, AI firms may have to look harder at where the pages behind their answers really come from, and publishers may gain a new way to ask for payment.

For people who use AI every day, the case is a reminder that a chatbot’s answer about the news is often built from articles someone else reported and paid for. When an answer matters, open the original source, check the date and see whether the page is behind a paywall. It also explains why some assistants now refuse to quote long passages or only give short summaries with links.

Nothing changes today for Brave users or for people using Claude, Perplexity or Grok. A lawsuit is a set of claims, not a ruling, and Brave has not yet given its side in court.

How to try it

Court filings, terms of use and paywall notices are often hard to read. Our free Rewrite text more clearly prompt turns a dense paragraph into plain words without changing its meaning. Fill in the fields like this:

Text to rewrite: paste one paragraph you find confusing, for example the section on copying and AI use in a news site’s terms of service, or a paragraph from an article about this lawsuit.
Who will read it: “Me, with no legal training, wanting to know what I am allowed to do”
Tone: “Warm and direct”

When the answer comes back, check three things. First, that every condition in the original, such as what is allowed, what is forbidden and any exceptions, is still there; if something is missing, ask for it back. Second, that the rewrite did not add rules or promises that were not in your text. Third, use the shorter alternative version as a quick summary, but go back to the original wording before you rely on it for anything important. For legal questions about your own situation, ask a qualified professional.

Try it

Rewrite text more clearly

Frequently asked questions

Why is The New York Times suing Brave?

The Times says Brave scraped its copyrighted articles with a crawler publishers cannot block, then sold access to that content through its search index to AI companies such as Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere. It also objects to a browser feature that gets around paywalls. It wants an injunction and damages.

Are Anthropic and Perplexity being sued in this case?

No. The complaints name these companies as customers of Brave's index, but they are not defendants in these two suits. The Times has a separate case against OpenAI and Microsoft from 2023 and has also sued Perplexity.

Does this affect people who use the Brave browser?

Not for now. The suits were filed on November 2, 2026, and no court has ruled. The browser keeps working as before, and any change to features such as the paywall bypass would depend on how the case develops.

Sources