Trump Administration Sides With OpenAI in Publishers’ Copyright Lawsuits

The Trump administration has weighed in on a series of copyright disputes between news organizations and OpenAI, supporting the ChatGPT-maker’s position that its use of publishers’ content to train AI models constituted fair use.

The statement of interest of the United States (PDF) was filed Tuesday in a series of cases in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, including one initiated by The New York Times and another by Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company. Ziff Davis filed the suit in 2025, alleging OpenAI infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

In its filing, the federal government said a ruling in publishers’ favor could hinder AI development, limit competition among AI firms and hurt the country’s competitiveness with foreign developers.

“Rules of law that make it significantly more difficult to develop a robust AI industry in the United States … threaten national security and give a competitive advantage to foreign adversaries who are not so encumbered,” the filing states.

Graham James, a spokesperson for The New York Times, told CNET in a statement that the administration is “siding with a handful of trillion-dollar AI companies” instead of American creators and that doing so undermines both creators and AI developers.