The Brave AI scraping lawsuit filed by The New York Times accuses the privacy-focused browser company of copying copyrighted journalism and distributing it to artificial intelligence developers without permission. The complaint was filed Monday, Nov. 2, in federal court in Manhattan.
The New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel filed a separate case the same day. Both actions challenge Brave’s handling of publisher content and its commercial relationships with AI companies.
Publishers Challenge Brave’s AI Content Distribution
The Times alleges that Brave built an index containing more than 30 billion webpages using a crawler that publishers could not identify or block. The complaint claims the company supplied copyrighted material to AI customers, including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere.
The newspaper describes Brave as an intermediary that obtains publishers’ content without authorization and sells access to third parties. These allegations have not been established in court.
The legal action also challenges browser features that allegedly bypass subscription paywalls. Publishers further accuse Brave of blocking their advertisements while generating revenue through its own advertising services.
Brave Faces Growing Copyright Scrutiny
Founded in 2015, Brave operates a privacy-focused browser, independent search engine and AI-related services. Private-market research firm Sacra estimates the company raised about $252 million in funding as of 2024.
The Times has previously sued OpenAI and Perplexity over allegations involving unauthorized use of copyrighted reporting. The new cases extend the dispute to companies supplying web content to AI developers.
The Times is seeking financial damages and a court order restricting the alleged infringement. The outcome could affect how search providers collect publisher content and license access to AI businesses.
