The New York Times sues Brave web browser for AI scraping and bypassing paywalls

The New York Times and a group of other publications have filed lawsuits against the company that makes the Brave web browser over alleged unlawful scraping to train AI and also letting users bypass their paywalls, as reported by Reuters.

According to a complaint filed by the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel, Brave Software has monetized its index of scraped websites by, in part, providing AI companies with paid access to “real-time online content from the Brave Index.” The AI companies then use that index to train their models, access content to “respond to specific user queries,” or both. Brave has allegedly provided “stolen copyrighted content” to “many” AI companies including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere.

Brave also promotes “hundreds of top publishers” as being accessible through its “Paywall blocker” feature in its browser.

“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 says. “On the contrary, as noted above, Brave allows its users to bypass the Publishers’ paywalls without their consent, and has taken other steps that prevent the Publishers from blocking Brave’s access to the Publishers’ websites. Brave has never compensated the Publishers for the unlawful use, copying, and distribution of the Publishers’ copyrighted content.”

“While we believe in the ethical and responsible use and development of AI, Brave has flouted established copyright law and ignored repeated requests by The Times to stop its infringing conduct,” Graham James, an NYT spokesperson, says in a statement to The Verge. “We filed this lawsuit 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.”

“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,” says Steven Lieberman, the attorney who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the other three publications. “Buying stolen goods secondhand doesn’t make them legitimate. Brave must be held responsible for laundering pirated reporting for the AI industry.”

Brave, Anthropic, Mistral, SpaceXSI, and Cohere, didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. “The New York Times is overpaying its attorneys and underpaying its journalists. (Who could’ve easily identified the disinformation in this suit.)” says Jesse Dwyer, Perplexity’s chief communications officer.

Update, November 2nd: Clarified that one lawsuit was filed by New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel, not the companies that run them. Also added a statement from the attorney that filed the lawsuit on behalf of those publications.