Brave sued by NYT and publishers over AI scraping

The New York Times and a coalition of other major publications have filed lawsuits against Brave Software, the maker of the Brave web browser, alleging that the company unlawfully scraped their content to train AI models and facilitated user access to paywalled material. According to a report by The Verge, the legal action claims Brave monetized its index of scraped websites by providing paid access to "real-time online content from the Brave Index" to numerous artificial intelligence companies.

The complaint, filed by the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel, asserts that Brave has provided "stolen copyrighted content" to "many" AI companies, specifically naming Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere. These firms allegedly use the index to train their models and to access content for responding to specific user queries. The plaintiffs argue that Brave has never sought permission from the publishers to access their websites, copy their material, or distribute it to third parties, nor has it compensated them for this use.

The allegations

The core of the lawsuit centers on two distinct but related practices: the sale of scraped data to AI developers and the technical facilitation of paywall circumvention. The complaint states that Brave allows users to bypass publisher paywalls without consent and has taken steps to prevent publishers from blocking Brave’s access to their sites.

"Brave has never asked for the Publishers’ permission to access their websites, much less to copy the material and provide it to users or other AI companies," the complaint reads. It further alleges that Brave has "flouted established copyright law and ignored repeated requests by The Times to stop its infringing conduct."

Graham James, a spokesperson for The New York Times, stated in a comment to The Verge that the company filed the suit to hold Brave accountable for "stealing our content to power its own products and to provide it to some of the most prominent and well resourced generative AI companies in the world." James emphasized that while Brave claims to believe in ethical AI development, its actions have ignored copyright law.

Steven Lieberman, the attorney who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Daily News, Tribune, and Sentinel, used stronger language in his statement. "AI giants are now desperate to avoid getting caught red-handed stealing news from publishers, so Brave Software is selling them a back door to the journalism they know they have no right to," Lieberman said. He characterized Brave's role as "laundering pirated reporting for the AI industry," arguing that buying stolen goods secondhand does not make them legitimate.

Industry response

The named AI companies, including Anthropic, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere, did not immediately respond to requests for comment as of the time of reporting. Perplexity, however, issued a sharp rebuttal through Jesse Dwyer, its chief communications officer. Dwyer dismissed the lawsuit as disinformation, stating, "The New York Times is overpaying its attorneys and underpaying its journalists. (Who could’ve easily identified the disinformation in this suit.)"

This dispute highlights a growing tension in the AI ecosystem regarding data provenance. While many AI companies have faced scrutiny for directly scraping publisher sites, the allegation that a third-party browser and search engine is acting as a conduit for this data adds a new layer of complexity to the legal landscape. The plaintiffs argue that Brave is not merely a passive tool but an active participant in the distribution of copyrighted material.

Context for developers

For developers and AI engineers, this lawsuit underscores the increasing legal risks associated with training data pipelines. The complaint suggests that relying on third-party indexes or proxies for data acquisition does not shield AI companies from liability if the underlying data was obtained without consent. The specific mention of "real-time online content" implies that the data is not just static archives but live feeds, which may have different implications for copyright infringement claims compared to historical datasets.

The allegation that Brave provides access to "respond to specific user queries" also touches on the distinction between training and inference. If AI companies are using Brave's index to fetch live content for real-time responses, this could be seen as a direct substitution for licensed content, potentially strengthening the publishers' claim that Brave is facilitating infringement rather than just enabling research.

What to watch

• Legal Precedent: Whether courts rule that third-party data aggregators like Brave can be held liable for the actions of their AI clients will set a significant precedent for the devtools and data infrastructure sector.
• AI Company Responses: Watch for further statements from Anthropic, Mistral, and others regarding their data sourcing agreements and whether they will seek indemnification from Brave if found liable.
• Technical Changes: Brave may modify its "Paywall blocker" feature or its data access APIs in response to the lawsuit, which could impact developers who rely on these tools for legitimate research or development purposes.
• Settlement Talks: Given the high-profile nature of the plaintiffs, there is a possibility of out-of-court settlements that could establish new norms for data licensing in the AI industry.