Analysis

Local News Could Lose in The New York Times vs. OpenAI Case

In a statement of interest filed recently in the case between The New York Times and OpenAI, the Department of Justice urged the court to reject the Times’ argument that training artificial intelligence (AI) models on copyrighted works is itself copyright infringement. If the court allows these broad copyright claims to proceed, there could be negative outcomes for both the AI and local journalism industries.

The Times sued OpenAI in December 2023, alleging that training on its articles without permission infringes on its copyrights. A federal judge allowed the core claims to proceed, and the remedies sought include destruction of the offending models and training data. The government’s position in the statement is that training is a transformative use, distinct from any question about what a model later produces. It argues that creating a broad copyright requirement would hamper competition among AI developers while subsidizing the largest publishers.

But the alleged crisis in American journalism is local, not national. There are now 212 U.S. counties with no locally based news source and another 1,525 with only one, leaving roughly one in seven Americans with limited or no access to local news. The Times counts nearly 13 million subscribers and competes directly with local outlets for the single news subscription most people will ever buy. It is a reminder that the interests of a national incumbent and a county seat weekly diverge, and a legal rule built around the former does not automatically rescue the latter.