Government sides with OpenAI in New York Times copyright battle

The Trump administration filed a legal brief supporting OpenAI in its ongoing copyright dispute with the New York Times and other publishers over using their work to train AI models like ChatGPT.

This is the first time the U.S. government has intervened in lawsuits by copyright owners – including news outlets, authors, publishers and music labels – regarding the use of copyrighted material for AI training.

The big picture: The government’s filing in Manhattan federal court argues that training large language models (LLMs) on copyrighted texts constitutes “extraordinarily” transformative use, which should be considered fair use under copyright law.

• The brief highlights the importance of AI development for scientific progress, national security and economic mobility, warning that restricting LLM development would hinder American innovation and prosperity.

Driving the news: The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, alleging millions of its articles were used without permission to train AI systems – one of many ongoing cases against tech firms like Anthropic and Meta.

What we’re watching: The ultimate legal question is whether AI companies’ use of copyrighted content to create new, transformative outputs falls under fair use, a debate that has already seen conflicting judicial decisions.