The same fortnight brought a major new copyright lawsuit and two high-profile licensing deals, underlining the split in how news publishers are responding to generative AI
Two Paths In One Fortnight
October has offered a clear illustration of the two strategies news publishers are adopting toward artificial intelligence companies. On October 9, USA Today Co filed a lawsuit against OpenAI seeking 250 million dollars in damages. A week later, on October 16, Reach, the UK’s largest commercial publisher, announced a deal with Google covering its UK and Ireland titles, and CNN confirmed a Google partnership of its own. Press Gazette’s running tracker of who is suing AI companies and who is signing deals records both.
The USA Today Co Case
According to Press Gazette’s summary, USA Today Co’s lawsuit concerns hundreds of thousands of articles from 19 of its publications, including USA Today, The Tennessean, IndyStar, the Detroit Free Press and The Des Moines Register. The company alleges that OpenAI’s WebText dataset included more than 160,000 entries from its titles and that GPT models have memorized its journalism. The claims have not been tested in court, and OpenAI has generally argued in other cases that its use of publicly available material is lawful.
USA Today Co joins a long list of publishers that have taken legal action in 2026. In June, owners of nearly 400 US local newspapers filed suit against OpenAI and Microsoft. In September, The Seattle Times and Newsday jointly sued the same companies, alleging scraping of content including paywalled articles. CNN filed its first lawsuit against an AI company, Perplexity, in May, alleging unlicensed copying of more than 17,000 works. Encyclopaedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster sued OpenAI in March. Publishers outside the United States, including a Danish media body and Argentina’s Editorial Perfil, have also filed claims.
The Google Deals
Reach’s agreement with Google covers its UK and Ireland portfolio, including the Mirror, the Express and the Manchester Evening News. CNN confirmed its own Google partnership shortly afterwards. Google says more than 400 publications now take part in its news AI pilot and that it pays for enhanced content rights. Financial terms were not disclosed.
These are not the only licensing deals of the year. News Corp reportedly agreed a deal with Meta in March worth up to 50 million dollars a year for at least three years. Reach had already agreed a usage-based arrangement with Amazon. OpenAI signed partnerships with Indian publishers Bennett, Coleman and Co and the Indian Express Group, reportedly worth around five million and three million dollars a year respectively, and with Canada’s Village Media. Brazil’s Folha settled a lawsuit against OpenAI with a commercial agreement, having already signed a deal with Google.
Other models are emerging too. In March, the News/Media Alliance agreed an opt-in licensing arrangement with the AI company Bria for its 2,200 members, with recurring payments based on usage. In June, seventeen publishers signed up to Snowflake’s Cortex platform, in deals reported to be worth six figures. Microsoft signed its first such deal in the Asia Pacific region with Australia’s Nine in July, allowing its Copilot assistant to use Nine’s journalism in real time. The market for news content in AI is fragmenting into many different kinds of arrangement.
Why Publishers Choose Differently
The choice between suing and signing reflects a mix of legal strategy, commercial need and principle. Publishers that sign deals gain immediate revenue and some influence over how their work appears in AI products. In a period of collapsing search traffic and repeated job cuts, that money matters. But licensing deals can also legitimize the use of journalism by AI systems on terms set largely by the technology companies, and the sums involved are often modest compared with the value of the content and the revenue publishers have lost.
Publishers that sue are betting that courts will recognize the value of their copyrighted work and force AI companies to pay more, or on different terms. Litigation is expensive, slow and uncertain. Several cases have produced mixed early rulings, including a federal judge’s July decision largely rejecting Perplexity’s bid to dismiss a suit brought by Reddit. Many publishers are pursuing both strategies at once, suing one AI company while partnering with another.
What Is At Stake
The legal and commercial fights are about more than money. They will shape how journalism is valued in an information ecosystem increasingly mediated by AI. If AI systems can summarize, paraphrase and answer questions using news content without meaningful payment or attribution, the economic incentive to produce original reporting weakens. If publishers can secure fair compensation and clear attribution, AI could become a new distribution channel rather than a replacement for journalism.
Questions For Newsrooms
For journalists and editors, the deals raise practical questions. How will their work be represented in AI answers? Will readers be directed back to the original reporting? Will licensing revenue be invested in newsrooms or absorbed into corporate balance sheets? And what safeguards exist to prevent AI systems from misattributing, distorting or fabricating content under a publisher’s name? Transparency about the terms of these deals, which are rarely disclosed in full, would help the industry and the public understand what is being traded.
The fortnight that brought USA Today Co’s lawsuit and the Reach and CNN deals is unlikely to be the last of its kind. The relationship between news publishers and AI companies is still being negotiated, in courtrooms and boardrooms alike. The outcome will help determine whether original journalism can remain economically viable in the age of generative AI.