New York Times lawyers claim OpenAI staff knew the ‘existential threat’ to publishers

The New York Times's lawyers argue that OpenAI staff knew the 'existential threat' AI posed to publishers, and that co-founder Greg Brockman was 'motivated by the gazillions' he hoped to gain from models trained on copyrighted content. The Financial Times reported the claims on Thursday, in the decisive stretch of the landmark copyright case.

OpenAI Watch analysis

What happened

The claims belong to the Times's legal team in the long-running fight over AI training. Beyond the headline argument that OpenAI staff saw the threat to publishers coming, the team's sharpest line is personal: it characterises Brockman, who co-founded OpenAI, as 'motivated by the gazillions' to be made from models trained on copyrighted work.

Both claims are contentions in live litigation, not findings by any court. The case is already at summary judgment, where OpenAI and Microsoft argue that training is transformative and their outputs do not replace Times journalism, while the publisher counters that mass copying created commercial substitutes for its work.

The central claims

• Knowledge of the threat
  The Times's lawyers say OpenAI staff knew the 'existential threat' AI posed to publishers.
• Motive, in their words
  They characterise co-founder Greg Brockman as 'motivated by the gazillions' from models trained on copyrighted content.
• Not a finding
  These are one side's contentions at the summary judgment stage, not established facts.

Why it matters

US fair use turns on statutory factors, and motive has never been one of them. Knowledge, though, feeds the factor that is: market effect. If the Times can back its claim with OpenAI's internal record, the transformative-use argument starts to sound less like innocent innovation and more like a known trade-off accepted in writing, which is a harder story for a judge to wave through.

The framing also escapes the courtroom. 'Gazillions' is the sort of word that leaves legal papers and runs straight into every headline about the case, and it invites the public to read OpenAI as a business that saw the risk to publishers and priced it in as the cost of winning. For every publisher negotiating licensing terms with an AI lab, that is useful leverage, whatever the ruling eventually says.

Our read

Read the quotes as advocacy, because that is what they are: a legal team writing for two audiences, one in robes and one holding a subscription. The knowledge claim is the substantive one, and it only bites if it rests on documents rather than atmosphere; motive alone has rarely sunk a fair-use defence. Watch OpenAI's answer as closely as the accusation, and keep the real question in view: does a model's output compete with the work that trained it? That, not the theatrical vocabulary, is where this case will be decided.

What to watch

• OpenAI's answer
  Whether the company contests the characterisations or argues the quoted lines were cherry-picked from internal debate.
• The document trail
  Which internal communications, if any, the Times's team actually cites for the knowledge claim.
• Summary judgment
  When the federal judge rules, which could resolve the case outright or send parts to trial.
• The publisher playbook
  Whether other media companies borrow the knowledge-of-harm framing in their own disputes with AI labs.

Discussion spark: Motive has never been a fair-use factor in US law: should a judge weigh what OpenAI staff allegedly knew about the harm to publishers, or does only market substitution belong in the analysis?

OpenAI Watch is independently operated by WittyWires. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by OpenAI.