Trump administration backs OpenAI in NYT case, claims training LLMs on copyrighted works is fair use
copyright openai training
| Source: Techmeme | Original article
The Trump administration filed a brief backing OpenAI in its legal clash with The New York Times, arguing that using copyrighted material to train large language models generally qualifies as fair use.
The U.S. Justice Department has entered the high‑profile copyright case between OpenAI and The New York Times, filing a brief that backs OpenAI’s claim that using copyrighted articles to train large language models falls under the doctrine of fair use. The filing, submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, does not constitute a ruling; the brief’s authors lack jurisdiction over the case, but the administration’s stance could sway the court’s thinking.
OpenAI argues that the massive text corpora it ingests are essential for building functional conversational agents, and that the transformative nature of the resulting models satisfies the four‑factor fair‑use test. The New York Times, by contrast, maintains that the company’s scraping of its articles infringes on its exclusive rights and deprives it of licensing revenue. By siding with OpenAI, the Trump administration signals a broader policy view that AI research should not be hamstrung by strict copyright constraints.
The intervention arrives as the industry watches a wave of litigation over AI training data, and it may set a precedent for how courts balance intellectual‑property protections against the public interest in AI innovation. Observers will be watching the district court’s ruling, any subsequent appeals, and whether other federal agencies or state governments file amicus briefs that echo or contest the Justice Department’s position.
The case also intersects with OpenAI’s recent product roadmap, including the rollout of its Astra model, which has drawn attention for advanced capabilities. A favorable decision could accelerate deployment of such models, while a setback might prompt tighter data‑use policies and reshape licensing negotiations between publishers and AI developers.
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