New York Times and other papers sue Brave browser over AI and paywalls

The New York Times and a group of other publications have sued Brave Software, the company behind the Brave web browser. They say it copied their articles without permission to supply AI companies, and that its browser lets people get around their paywalls. The news was first reported by Reuters.

What the suit claims

The complaint was filed by the companies that run the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune and the Orlando Sentinel. It says Brave makes money from an index of scraped websites, which is a big stored copy of web pages. Brave allegedly sells AI companies paid access to "real-time online content from the Brave Index."

• The AI firms allegedly use it to train models, answer user questions, or both.
• Named customers include Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere.
• Brave's "Paywall blocker" feature is said to cover "hundreds of top publishers."
• The publishers say Brave never asked permission and never paid them.

What each side says

A Times spokesperson, Graham James, said Brave ignored repeated requests to stop. Perplexity's communications chief, Jesse Dwyer, answered with a jab, saying the Times is overpaying its lawyers and underpaying its journalists. Brave, Anthropic, Mistral and Cohere had not replied to The Verge when it published.

What is not known yet

These are claims in a complaint, not court findings. It is unclear how Brave will respond or whether its paywall feature will change. For Brave users, the case could affect that feature and shows how web content can end up in AI tools.