The New York Times and a group of other publications have filed lawsuits against the company that makes the Brave web browser, for allegedly illegal scraping aimed at training AI and also allowing users to bypass their paywalls, as reported Reuters.
According to a complaint filed by the New York Daily NewsTHE Chicago Tribuneand the Orlando SentinelBrave Software has monetized its index of scraped websites, in part by providing AI companies with paid access to “real-time online content from the Brave Index.” AI companies then use this index to train their models, access content to “answer specific user queries,” or both. Brave allegedly provided “stolen copyrighted content” to “numerous” AI companies, including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere.
Brave also promotes “hundreds of major publishers” as accessible through its “Paywall blocker” feature in its browser.
“Brave never requested permission from publishers to access their websites, let alone copy the material and provide it to users or other AI companies,” the complaint states. “To the contrary, as noted above, Brave allows its users to bypass publishers’ paywalls without their consent and has taken other steps that prevent publishers from blocking Brave’s access to publishers’ websites. Brave has never compensated publishers for the illegal use, copying, and distribution of 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 from The Times to stop its illicit behavior,” said Graham James, a New York Times spokesperson, said in a statement to The edge. “We filed this lawsuit to hold Brave responsible for stealing our content to power its own products and provide it to some of the largest and most well-resourced generative AI companies in the world.”
“AI giants are desperate to avoid getting caught stealing information from publishers. So Brave Software is selling them a back door to the journalism they know they’re not entitled to,” said Steven Lieberman, the attorney who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the other three publications. “Buying stolen goods used does not make them legitimate. Brave must be held accountable 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 He overpays his lawyers and underpays his journalists. (Who could have easily identified the misinformation contained in this lawsuit.),” says Jesse Dwyer, Perplexity’s communications director.
November 2 update: Clarification that a lawsuit was initiated by New York Daily NewsTHE Chicago Tribuneand the Orlando Sentinelnot the companies that manage them. I have also added a statement from the attorney who filed the complaint on behalf of these publications.
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