US Government Sides With OpenAI in Copyright Training Lawsuit
The Trump administration just weighed in on a major AI copyright case. And they are siding with OpenAI.
Let me break down what is happening.
The Case
The New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI over the company’s use of copyrighted material to train its LLMs. The question is whether AI companies can use published works without permission.
This is not a black and white issue. The debate centers on fair use, a carve out of copyright law that makes exceptions for certain scenarios. The key question is whether AI companies’ use of copyrighted work is “transformative” enough to be legal.
The Government’s Position
The Trump administration filed a 20-page brief in defense of OpenAI. The brief argues that constraining LLM development under a misunderstanding of fair use would “thwart creative and scientific progress while hindering American prosperity and economic mobility.”
“The United States has a strong interest in continuing to develop a robust and competitive artificial intelligence industry that sets the standard for the practice and procedure of AI use globally.”
The brief references an executive order that President Trump signed last year about retaining global AI leadership.
The Bigger Context
So far, cases about AI training and copyright infringement have largely been favorable to AI companies.
Last year, Judge William Alsup ordered Anthropic to pay a $1.5 billion copyright settlement to a group of writers. But Anthropic was not dinged for its AI training. The company was fined for using illegal shadow libraries to pirate the books.
Judge Alsup compared LLM training to a human reading a book:
“Like any reader aspiring to be a writer, Anthropic’s LLMs trained upon works not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them, but to turn a hard corner and create something different.”
What This Brief Does
This is not a ruling. The case is being tried in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The authors of the brief do not have jurisdiction.
However, this intervention by the Trump administration could still carry weight. It signals where the executive branch stands on the issue.
Why This Matters
AI companies have been training their models on massive databases of published works, including copyrighted books, articles, and other media. Many publishers have argued this is illegal.
The government is now saying: “We need AI leadership, and restricting training would hurt that.”
This case could set a precedent for how AI training is treated under copyright law.
The Bottom Line
The Trump administration filed a brief supporting OpenAI’s use of copyrighted material for AI training. The government argues that restricting LLM development would hurt American AI leadership. The brief is not a ruling, but it signals the executive branch’s position.
