Trump’s DoJ Backs OpenAI In Legal Face Off With New York Times

The Trump administration is throwing its weight behind OpenAI in a copyright lawsuit brought by The New York Times accusing the tech company of mass theft for using the publication’s content to train its AI system.

In a brief backing OpenAI filed in New York federal court on Tuesday, the Justice Department argues that training on copyrighted material constitutes fair use, the legal doctrine in intellectual property law that allows creators to build upon copyrighted works without a license.

The motion appears to be the first time the government has weighed in on novel issues raised by the tech that could have far-reaching implications on news and music publishers and studios in a series of cases against AI companies.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Times said the administration is “siding with a handful of trillion-dollar AI companies at the expense of the countless American creators whose work they stole.”

“Both AI and creators can thrive – AI companies simply need to pay fairly for the content that makes their products possible, as copyright law requires,” the spokesperson added. “The Administration’s proposal to let companies take that content without permission or compensation would undermine the sustainability of the human-created content that a healthy society depends on, and which AI needs to function.”