Sam Altman Confronts New York Times Lawsuit in Fiery Podcast Appearance

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman surprised attendees at a packed San Francisco event this week by forcefully addressing The New York Times’ ongoing lawsuit against his company—turning what was expected to be a routine podcast interview into a pointed critique of the media’s growing opposition to artificial intelligence development.

Altman appeared onstage alongside OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap during a live recording of Hard Fork, a popular technology podcast hosted by journalist Kevin Roose of The New York Times and Platformer founder Casey Newton. The event drew hundreds to a venue better known for jazz performances, but any hope for a laid-back, conversational evening quickly dissolved as Altman took direct aim at one of the world’s most influential newspapers.

Within moments of taking the stage, Altman interrupted the hosts’ planned introduction with a pointed remark: “Are you going to talk about where you sue us because you don’t like user privacy?” The statement referenced the Times’ high-profile lawsuit accusing OpenAI and its key investor, Microsoft, of using copyrighted news content without permission to train artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT.

The lawsuit, filed in late 2023, is one of several ongoing legal challenges from major news organizations against AI companies, alleging that their large language models—trained on vast datasets scraped from the internet—illegally ingested copyrighted works. But a recent development in the case particularly rankled Altman: The New York Times’ legal team requested that OpenAI retain user data from ChatGPT and its API services, even when users had activated privacy settings or requested data deletion.

“The New York Times, one of the great institutions, truly, for a long time, is taking a position that we should have to preserve our users’ logs even if they’re chatting in private mode, even if they’ve asked us to delete them,” Altman said. “Still love The New York Times, but that one we feel strongly about.”

Altman’s comments suggest deep frustration not only with the legal claims but with what he views as an overreach that compromises user privacy—an issue increasingly central to the public debate over AI regulation and data governance.

Tensions Between AI and Media Reach Boiling Point

While the confrontation only lasted a few minutes before the interview returned to more expected territory, it offered a striking example of how strained relations have become between leading AI companies and traditional media outlets. At stake is not only the legality of how large language models are trained, but also broader questions about the future of journalism, intellectual property, and consumer rights in the AI era.

Several major publishers, including The New York Times, The Associated Press, and Getty Images, have taken legal or contractual steps to protect their content from being used without authorization. The core of their argument is that AI-generated text and imagery, when trained on their proprietary work, devalues the original product and undermines the sustainability of journalism as a business model.

AI companies like OpenAI argue that their models learn from a wide swath of publicly available data in a way that is transformative and beneficial to society. They also emphasize that they do not store or reproduce copyrighted material verbatim and that the models generate new, original content in response to user prompts.

However, critics argue that without licensing agreements, these models effectively cannibalize creative labor—repackaging the work of journalists, authors, and artists without compensation or attribution.

A Broader Shift in Tech-Media Relations

Altman’s unusually confrontational tone at the Hard Fork event underscored a larger inflection point in the relationship between Silicon Valley and the press. For much of the last two decades, tech firms viewed the media as a partner, if not an outright ally, in telling stories about innovation and disruption. But with the rise of AI and the attendant legal and ethical controversies, that alliance appears to be fracturing.

Brad Lightcap, though more reserved during the exchange, echoed Altman’s concerns in later remarks, noting that preserving user trust is a non-negotiable for OpenAI. “We’ve been very clear that user privacy is foundational to everything we do,” he said. “We’re not going to compromise that just because someone wants access to logs we’ve promised to delete.”

For Altman, the friction with The New York Times—an organization he repeatedly praised even as he criticized—may reflect a broader anxiety: the growing momentum behind legal efforts that could fundamentally reshape how AI models are trained and governed.

In recent months, lawmakers in both the United States and the European Union have introduced legislation aimed at requiring transparency, consent, and even compensation for the use of copyrighted materials in AI training datasets. The outcomes of these debates could have sweeping implications for AI innovation and media economics alike.

The Road Ahead

Altman’s public pushback against The New York Times may be just the beginning of a wider campaign by tech leaders to shape public opinion and policy around AI development. As the lawsuits progress through the courts, the conversation is also playing out in podcast interviews, press conferences, and regulatory hearings.

While neither Roose nor Newton commented directly on the lawsuit during the episode—citing their affiliations with The New York Times—the moment marked a rare unscripted collision between Silicon Valley leadership and the media establishment.

Whether OpenAI ultimately prevails in court or not, Altman’s appearance signals that the battle over data, copyright, and control in the AI era is far from over—and that its next chapter may be just as contentious as its last.