The Trump administration has intervened in the ongoing copyright lawsuit between OpenAI, Microsoft, and The New York Times by filing an advisory brief in Manhattan federal court. The brief sides with OpenAI, arguing that using copyrighted material to train artificial intelligence models is critical for maintaining American competitiveness and global leadership in AI.
The US government stated that training large language models is “extraordinarily” transformative under the fair use doctrine. Officials warned that restricting LLM development through an incorrect interpretation of copyright law would hinder creative and scientific progress while threatening national security and economic prosperity.
While the brief carries advisory weight rather than legal authority, it provides significant political backing to tech companies facing dozens of lawsuits from authors, publishers, and media outlets. Courts remain divided on whether model training constitutes fair use, leaving the legal landscape uncertain as cases progress.
Why it matters
Signals strong executive branch backing for AI developers defending against copyright infringement lawsuits.
Strengthens the legal fair-use defense for training generative AI models on publicly available Web content.
Reduces regulatory and legal litigation uncertainty for US startups training foundation models.
Source: theguardian.com
