On July 9, 17 publishing and media companies including The New York Times and New York Daily News filed a motion in the Manhattan federal court seeking "serious sanctions" against OpenAI, alleging it withheld and destroyed key evidence in the copyright case over how ChatGPT was trained.
July 9, 2026 · Manhattan Federal Court
17 Publishers Seek "Serious Sanctions" Against OpenAI
The New York Times, New York Daily News and others accuse OpenAI of withholding and destroying key evidence in the copyright fight over how ChatGPT was trained — allegedly deleting chat logs in violation of a court preservation order.
17
Publishing & media companies filing the motion
35
More local & regional papers that sued in June 2026
80M+
ChatGPT responses plaintiffs had to reconstruct
Scale of evidence allegedly lost
Reconstructed
80M+
Responses allegedly
Billions
Plaintiffs say billions of responses and millions of chat histories were destroyed despite a preservation order.
The core allegations
OpenAI downplayed its technical capabilities throughout the litigation.
Training datasets and ChatGPT output logs were in fact searchable — a fact surfaced in the redone April 2026 deposition of expert Vinnie Monaco.
"Project Giraffe": an internal effort to prevent verbatim regurgitation of copyrighted works.
OpenAI and co-defendant Microsoft declined to comment.
Publishers argue
Verbatim reproduction reflects systematic copying — AI output is inaccurate, undermines original journalism, diverts traffic and poses an existential threat to local papers.
OpenAI's position
Verbatim reproduction is a "rare bug," not systematic copying. The company has declined further comment on the sanctions motion.
What's at stake
Fair use for AI training
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Publisher revenue models
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Future of generative AI & journalism
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