The New York Times sued Brave Software on Monday, accusing the browser maker of unlawfully scraping its journalism and selling access to that content to AI companies. Hours later, a second suit followed from additional publishers, including the owner of the New York Daily News — bringing the total to four US papers taking Brave to court, per reporting from The Verge and The Next Web.

The complaints target two fronts. First, the publishers allege Brave scraped their articles to feed AI training and search products without authorization or payment. Second, they say the browser lets users bypass paywalls, undercutting the subscription revenue that funds their newsrooms.

The suits extend a widening legal campaign by publishers against companies they say are monetizing their work through AI pipelines. The Times has been among the most aggressive, and going after a browser maker — rather than a foundation-model lab — signals publishers are now tracing the data supply chain further down, to the intermediaries that collect and resell content.

For Brave, which has marketed itself as a privacy-first alternative to Chrome, the litigation strikes at a core business question: whether its search and AI offerings are built on content it had no right to use. Brave has not yet prevailed on, or publicly resolved, any of the claims.