Technology and Science02 September, 20263 min read
Trump Administration Backs OpenAI in New York Times Copyright Lawsuit Over LLM Training
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The U.S. Department of Justice filed a brief backing OpenAI in the NYT copyright case. The brief argues AI training on copyrighted text generally constitutes fair use.
DOJ backs AI training
The Trump administration filed a brief supporting OpenAI in its dispute with The New York Times over the use of copyrighted material to train large language models behind ChatGPT, arguing that training LLMs on copyrighted texts can generally fall under fair use. Reuters reported the brief was filed in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday and said the government has a “strong interest” in rejecting arguments that training LLMs on copyrighted texts violates copyright law. The Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in late 2023, alleging the companies used millions of its articles without permission to train models like GPT-4 and build products that compete with the newspaper as an information source.
The filing frames the issue as a distinction between copying for training and what the model actually outputs, saying that during training entire works are copied but never made publicly available and that outputs “often if not always lack substantial similarity” to the originals. In the same filing, the DOJ argued that “Human beings create original works using LLMs,” and said liability for AI training alone would stifle the creativity that copyright law is supposed to protect.
National security and creators
The government told the court that an adverse ruling would hamper development of AI models that “will be critical for US national security capabilities,” and it also warned that a loss could hamper competition in the market for LLMs by leaving licensing fees to only the largest technology companies.
U.S. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward defended the filing in a statement posted to X, saying, “AI dominance is critical to promote national security, prosperity, and economic mobility for all Americans.”
The New York Times spokesperson Graham James said the administration was “siding with a handful of trillion-dollar AI companies at the expense of the countless American creators whose work they stole,” and said both AI and creators can thrive if AI companies “pay fairly” for content.
The Author’s Guild’s Mary Rasenberger told WIRED the nonprofit was “extremely disappointed” and called the letter “replete with faulty arguments and a gross misunderstanding of the fair use doctrine and copyright law.”
WIRED reported that Evan Brown, an intellectual property lawyer with Neal & McDevitt, said U.S. district judge Sidney H. Stein is not obliged to let the letter influence his decision, but that judges “will almost certainly take it quite seriously because it comes from the Department of Justice.”
What happens next
The brief is described as a statement of interest that carries advisory rather than legal weight, but it could bolster tech companies as they fight claims in the consolidated lawsuit involving The New York Times and other rights holders.
The Times case has since expanded, with other news organizations joining related actions, and Quartz and Reuters both described the filing as the first time the U.S. government has stepped into the growing wave of copyright litigation over AI training.
TechCrunch reported that the brief references an executive order signed by President Donald Trump and argues it is critical to “retain global leadership in artificial intelligence,” while also warning that “Constraining LLM development under a misunderstanding of fair use doctrine would thwart such creative and scientific progress.”
TechCrunch also pointed to prior rulings where Judge William Alsup ordered Anthropic to pay a $1.5 billion copyright settlement to a group of writers whose works were used to train its AI models, while the judge said Anthropic wasn’t dinged for its AI training.
Across the broader fight, WIRED said Anthropic lost its case and must pay authors $1.5 billion in damages, while Meta technically won its copyright case in Kadrey v. Meta, with the judge noting plaintiffs did not produce enough evidence that training caused them harm.