The New York Times and a group of other publications have filed lawsuits against the company that makes the Brave web browser for alleged illegal scraping to train AI and also for allowing users to bypass their paywalls, as reported by Reuters.
According to a complaint filed by the New York Daily Newshe Chicago Tribuneand the Orlando SentinelBrave Software has monetized its index of deleted websites, in part, by providing AI companies with paid access to “real-time online content from the Brave Index.” AI companies then use that index to train their models, access content to “answer 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 that “hundreds of top publishers” can be accessed through its “paywall blocker” feature in your browser.
“Brave has never asked permission from publishers to access its websites, much less to copy the material and provide it to users or other AI companies,” the complaint says. “In contrast, as noted above, Brave allows its users to bypass publisher paywalls without their consent, and has taken other measures that prevent publishers from blocking Brave’s access to publisher websites. Brave has never compensated publishers for the unlawful use, copying and distribution of publishers’ copyrighted content.”
“While we believe in the ethical and responsible use and development of AI, Brave has violated established copyright law and ignored the Times’ repeated requests to stop its infringing behavior,” said Graham James, a NOW spokesperson, states in a statement addressed to The edge. “We filed this lawsuit to hold Brave accountable for stealing our content to power their own products and providing it to some of the most prominent and well-resourced generative AI companies in the world.”
“The AI giants are now desperate to avoid being caught stealing news from publishers red-handed, so Brave Software is selling them a backdoor to journalism they know they are not entitled to,” says Steven Lieberman, the lawyer who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the other three publications. “Buying stolen goods secondhand does not make them legitimate. Brave should be held responsible for laundering hacked reports for the AI industry.”
Brave, Anthropic, Mistral, SpaceXSI and Cohere did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “The New York Times It is overpaying its lawyers and underpaying its journalists. (Who could have easily identified the misinformation in this lawsuit?),” says Jesse Dwyer, director of communications at Perplexity.
Update, November 2: He clarified that a lawsuit was filed by New York Daily Newshe Chicago Tribuneand the Orlando Sentinelnot the companies that manage them. A statement from the attorney who filed the lawsuit on behalf of those publications was also added.
