Trump administration backs OpenAI in New York copyright fight

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Trump backs OpenAI copyright case

Highlights

The Trump administration's Justice Department filed a brief supporting OpenAI against The New York Times, arguing that restricting AI training would undermine U.S. innovation and prosperity.
The legal filing references prior Trump executive orders promoting American AI leadership and frames AI development as essential for national security and economic mobility.
This move could influence numerous ongoing lawsuits by copyright holders against AI firms and signals the White House's preference for voluntary, light-touch AI regulation rather than strict mandates.

Justice Department filing backs AI training

As reported by Financial Times, the Department of Justice says in a Wednesday court filing that restricting OpenAI from training models on millions of articles would hinder creative and scientific progress as well as American prosperity and economic mobility.

The Trump administration is siding with OpenAI against The New York Times, which sued the company in 2023 and alleged it took a free ride by using large volumes of copyrighted material to build its chatbot. The filing says the U.S. has a strong interest in the court rejecting arguments that training large language models on copyrighted text violates copyright law.

The legal brief also cites executive orders signed by President Donald Trump that direct the government to support U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence. Associate attorney-general Stanley Woodward calls the intervention historic and says it aligns with the president's view that AI dominance is critical to national security, prosperity and economic mobility.

Broader implications for media and AI policy

The move could matter in dozens of lawsuits brought by creators, publishers and other copyright holders that accuse AI groups of using content without permission or payment. It also fits with the White House's broader preference for light-touch, voluntary oversight rather than stricter AI regulation backed by some Republicans across the U.S.

The administration's position comes days after Trump calls for more AI data centre construction despite opposition from some of his own supporters and Republican strategists. Trump also has a separate conflict with The New York Times and is personally pursuing a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the newspaper, which it denies.

The New York Times says the administration is siding with a handful of trillion-dollar AI companies at the expense of American creators. Spokesperson Graham James says AI companies need to pay fairly for content used to make their products possible and warns that allowing use without permission or compensation would undermine the sustainability of human-created content. OpenAI does not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Our earlier article on the federal brief in The New York Times v. OpenAI case explained why the Trump administration backed OpenAI’s argument that training large language models on copyrighted text can qualify as fair use. We noted that the filing framed limits on training as a risk to U.S. AI leadership and to creative, scientific, and economic progress, and highlighted how recent court outcomes have often distinguished between unlawful data acquisition and the training process itself.

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