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OpenAI sought records about The New York Times’s use of generative AI, but the court orders available here do not show a judge ordering the Times to hand over all reporters’ notes. The documented disputes concern investigative prompts and outputs, the Times’s internal use of AI tools, and ChatExplorer logs. Those discovery requests were denied at different stages; none of the rulings decided whether OpenAI’s model training infringed copyright or qualified as fair use.
What OpenAI wanted to see
The headline phrase “all notes” can obscure several distinct categories of material in the copyright case. Court orders describe requests involving the Times’s pre-suit investigation, its own use of generative AI, and prompts and outputs from the Times’s ChatExplorer tool. The orders do not establish that the court ordered reporters’ notes produced.
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- Investigative prompts and outputs: OpenAI sought certain prompts and outputs from the Times’s pre-suit investigation. A court order dated October 30, 2024, records that the motion to compel those materials was denied without prejudice. See the October 30, 2024 order in the case docket.
- The Times’s AI use: OpenAI also sought discovery about the Times’s use of generative AI tools, including nonparty tools and its own GenAI products. A later order recounts that this broader request was denied as irrelevant to OpenAI’s fair-use defense. It also says the Times had agreed to produce documents about its use of defendants’ tools in reporting or presentation, and training about those tools. The later order recounts the earlier discovery ruling.
- ChatExplorer logs: In September 2025, OpenAI and Microsoft sought all prompts and outputs from the Times’s ChatExplorer logs. OpenAI separately sought a four-hour deposition concerning allegedly unpreserved logs. The court denied both requests. Read the September 19, 2025 order.
Did the judge order reporters to turn over all their notes?
No such order is established by the cited court rulings. The orders address the discovery categories listed above, not a blanket directive requiring Times reporters to produce all their notes. The distinction matters: an argument or request by a party is not the same as a court order granting it.
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The October 2024 order denied the motion concerning specified investigative prompts and outputs without prejudice. In September 2025, Magistrate Judge Ona T. Wang denied the motions for all ChatExplorer prompts and outputs, along with OpenAI’s proposed deposition, because the defendants had not shown the discovery was relevant or proportional. The rulings do not establish what any separate reporter-notes request may have sought beyond what those orders describe.
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Why the court rejected the later requests
The September 19, 2025 order applied the discovery standards of relevance and proportionality. Judge Wang wrote: “Because Defendants have not demonstrated relevance or proportionality of the discovery sought, Defendants’ motions are DENIED.” That was a decision about whether the requested material belonged in discovery on the record before the court, not a finding about the truth of the copyright allegations.
In describing the earlier dispute over the Times’s use of AI, the later order quoted the court’s November 2024 explanation: “This case is about whether Defendant trained their LLMs using Plaintiff‘s copyrighted material, and whether that use constitutes copyright infringement. It is not a referendum on the benefits of [GenAI], on Plaintiff‘s business practices, or about whether any of Plaintiff‘s employees use [GenAI] at work.”
How the notes dispute fits into the copyright case
The Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft over the alleged use of Times journalism to train language models and the models’ alleged reproduction of Times content. OpenAI’s discovery requests concerning the Times’s own AI use sought material it argued was relevant to its fair-use defense. The court’s response, as recounted in the orders, was that broad inquiry into the Times’s AI practices was not relevant to resolving whether defendants used the Times’s copyrighted material to train their models.
That procedural line does not decide the underlying dispute. A denial of a motion to compel means the requested discovery was not ordered under the court’s relevance and proportionality analysis; it does not determine whether training was infringement, whether fair use applies, or how the case will ultimately be resolved.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the latest status report establishes
Axios reported on September 8, 2026, that the parties had argued before District Judge Sidney Stein about whether the case, or key portions of it, should proceed to trial, with a decision expected in the coming months. Read Axios’s September 8, 2026 report. That dated report is not confirmation of a later ruling, and the materials cited here do not establish the docket outcome as of October 8, 2026.
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