A lawsuit from The New York Times and other publishers puts two uses of online content at the center of a dispute involving Brave Software: building an index of websites for AI companies and giving browser users access to publisher sites behind paywalls. The claims are allegations in a complaint, and the account includes a response from Perplexity.
Publishers challenge how Brave’s index is used
The complaint was filed by companies that run the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune and the Orlando Sentinel. It alleges that Brave Software scraped websites and then made money by giving AI companies paid access to “real-time online content from the Brave Index.”
According to the complaint, companies use that index to train AI models, retrieve content in response to specific user queries, or do both. The publishers allege that the material includes copyrighted content and say Brave provided it to “many” AI companies, including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere.
The dispute concerns more than whether a website can be found in an index. The publishers’ allegation is that material was copied and made available for uses that include training models and answering queries. If the claims are borne out, the case could raise questions about how publishers’ content is gathered and made available through AI-related services.
The paywall feature is another point of conflict
The complaint also points to Brave’s “Paywall blocker” feature, which the browser promotes as providing access to “hundreds of top publishers.” The publishers allege that this lets users bypass their paywalls without consent.
They further claim Brave took steps that prevent publishers from blocking its access to their websites. The complaint says the publishers were not asked for permission to access their sites, copy material or provide it to users and other AI companies. It also alleges they were never compensated for the use, copying and distribution of their copyrighted content.
These allegations connect two distinct concerns: the availability of publisher material through a browser feature and its supply to AI companies. The complaint presents both as parts of what it describes as unauthorized use. Whether those claims are established is a matter for the lawsuit; the source account does not provide a ruling or a response from Brave.
The Times says it had asked Brave to stop
Graham James, a New York Times spokesperson, said the newspaper believes in ethical and responsible AI development, but accused Brave of disregarding copyright law and repeated requests to stop the alleged conduct. He said the lawsuit aims to hold Brave accountable for using Times content in its products and providing it to prominent generative AI companies.
That statement frames the case as both a copyright dispute and a disagreement about the role of publishers’ content in AI services. The publishers’ position, as described in the complaint and the spokesperson’s statement, is that access to their websites does not authorize copying, redistribution or commercial use.
Responses remain limited in the account
Brave, Anthropic, Mistral, SpaceXSI, and Cohere did not immediately reply to a request for comment, according to the report. The source does not include a response from Brave or those companies explaining their position.
Jesse Dwyer, Perplexity’s chief communications officer, responded to The Verge by criticizing The New York Times’ spending on attorneys and saying the newspaper was underpaying journalists. He also called the lawsuit’s claims disinformation. That is Perplexity’s stated response; it does not resolve the publishers’ allegations.
For now, the central claims remain contested: the publishers allege unauthorized scraping, paid access to copyrighted material and paywall bypassing, while Perplexity rejects the suit’s account. The case puts the practices described by the publishers under legal challenge, but the source article reports allegations and comments rather than a final decision.