Artificial Intelligence1 min read

The New York Times and other publications sue Brave web browser for AI scraping and bypassing paywalls

By · Via The Verge · Published by Everything Blog

In short

The New York Times, New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel have taken collective legal action targeting Brave Software over copyright infringement. Beyond scraping copyrighted articles without permission, the browser maker is accused of distributing features that enable readers to evade publisher paywalls. The legal complaint further details how Brave monetized these scraped materials by selling real-time web access to artificial intelligence companies for training purposes and query generation. While most named entities remained silent, Perplexity's chief communications officer Jesse Dwyer pushed back against the claims, criticizing the litigation as misinformed.

Key points

  • Publishers are intensifying legal pushback against unauthorized web scraping and browser…: Publishers are intensifying legal pushback against unauthorized web scraping and browser features designed to circumvent digital paywalls.
  • Commercial data pipelines connecting browser web indices to generative artificial intelli…: Commercial data pipelines connecting browser web indices to generative artificial intelligence model training face heightened legal scrutiny.
  • AI firms receiving third-party scraped data are increasingly being pulled into broader co…: AI firms receiving third-party scraped data are increasingly being pulled into broader copyright battles alongside web scraping companies.

Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1

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.

The New York Times and other publications sue Brave web browser for AI scraping and bypassing paywalls

Brave has allegedly provided ‘stolen copyrighted content’ to many AI companies.

Brave has allegedly provided ‘stolen copyrighted content’ to many AI companies.

According to a complaint filed by the companies that run 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…

Artificial Intelligence