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New York Times' AI legal bill up 32.6%

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The New York Times Company booked $4.6m of generative-AI litigation costs in the second quarter, against $3.5m a year earlier. Two years in, the copyright fight is getting dearer.

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Key takeaway

The Times' quarterly bill for its generative-AI copyright litigation is rising, not falling.

The New York Times Company booked $4.6m of pre-tax generative-AI litigation costs in the second quarter of 2026, against $3.5m in the same quarter of 2025, a rise of 32.6 per cent. For the half year the figures are $8.8m against $7.9m, up 12.1 per cent ¹. After tax the quarter's charge is $3.4m, or $0.02 a share ².

Both years sit inside the same filing, so no external comparison is needed to read the direction. The Times has carried Generative AI Litigation Costs as a discrete named special item since the first quarter of 2024, when it began pursuing its copyright claim over the use of its journalism to train generative models. Management carves the line out of adjusted operating profit as non-recurring, and both comparisons in the filing show it rising anyway.

That accounting choice does work of its own. No other major news publisher reports this as a named line rather than folding it into general and administrative costs, so the Times is building a public record of what defending the position costs while calling it exceptional. The record is useful in settlement talks and useful again when pricing any licence the company later agrees.

The $1.5bn Bartz v Anthropic class settlement set the headline number for what unlicensed training data costs at the end of a case. $4.6m a quarter is what one publisher pays to stay in the argument while it runs, and a smaller title weighing the same suit can now price that fight before filing one. The counter is procedural: legal costs climb as a case moves toward trial, so an accelerating line measures stage as much as escalation. This is the bill for the scraping era, not for anything the Times has deployed.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The New York Times is suing AI companies, arguing they used its journalism without permission to train their AI models. Fighting that case costs money: legal fees, expert witnesses and years of preparation before a trial even starts. The Times reported spending $4.6m on that fight in the second quarter of 2026 alone, nearly a third more than the same quarter last year, showing the legal bill for pursuing AI companies over its journalism is going up, not down, as the case drags on.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The New York Times has run 'Generative AI Litigation Costs' as its own named line item since Q1 2024, the cost of prosecuting its copyright suit against AI developers over unauthorised use of its journalism, not of defending itself against a claim.

The 32.6% year-on-year rise in Q2 and 12.1% for the half show that spend accelerating rather than flattening two years in: discovery and expert-evidence costs in a case this size tend to compound as it nears trial, not taper off.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: Bartz v. Anthropic, the authors' class action over training-data copyright use, reached a $1.5bn settlement that Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin took under submission in May 2026 with a 92.77% claims rate. The New York Times is pursuing the same underlying theory, unauthorised use of copyrighted journalism to train AI models, against different defendants, and has not reached that stage.

Counter-parallel: The Anthropic case has settled; The New York Times's litigation costs are rising because its case has not, so the parallel shows a possible destination rather than a comparable outcome so far.

The pre-tax figures translate to $3.4m after tax in Q2 2026 (2 cents per share) and $6.5m after tax for the half (4 cents per share), against $2.6m (2 cents) and $5.8m (4 cents) a year earlier, so the per-share drag has grown more slowly than the headline dollar figure, which rose by nearly a third.

Management carves the cost out of adjusted operating profit as non-recurring, but a rising 'non-recurring' line item in its third consecutive year is a better guide to the Times's ongoing legal exposure than any single quarter's figure.

Sources:US Securities and Exchange Commission·US Securities and Exchange Commission

Mentions:Securities and Exchange Commission →Anthropic →New York →New York Times →

First Reported In

Update #12 · Palantir deal at USA Today draws union fire

US Securities and Exchange Commission· 7 Sept 2026

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