New York Times files copyright lawsuit against browser maker Brave

The New York Times, joined by several other newspaper publishers, filed a lawsuit yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Brave Software. The legal action alleges that Brave unlawfully circumvents paywalls and profits from the distribution of copyrighted news material to AI developers.

The complaint asserts that Brave acts as a primary supplier of copyrighted information to major AI entities, including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere. According to the court filing, plaintiffs estimate that Brave has generated over $100 million by reselling publisher content without authorization, while the original content creators received no compensation.

Central to the lawsuit is the Brave Search API, which provides real-time web data to AI firms. The Times argues that this data is used to train proprietary large language models and to generate responses for user queries. While Brave has openly marketed its search API as a resource for AI companies, the publishers contend that this practice constitutes the unauthorized commercialization of their intellectual property.

The outcome of this litigation could significantly impact how browser developers and search providers aggregate data for artificial intelligence applications, potentially setting a precedent for copyright enforcement in the generative AI sector.