The Trump administration has publicly supported OpenAI in its legal dispute with the New York Times, asserting that the company’s use of copyrighted articles for AI training falls under fair use. The federal government submitted a letter to the court on Tuesday, emphasizing that the U.S. has a strong interest in determining whether AI training on copyrighted works is considered fair use, as it affects the nation’s ability to maintain global leadership in artificial intelligence. The letter claims that the Times’ interpretation of fair use is inconsistent with current copyright law and could have severe consequences for AI development. Source: wired
The government’s letter argues that large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s are “extraordinarily transformative,” meaning they significantly alter their inputs, and that these systems do not directly compete with the content they are trained on. The administration also warned that conflating AI training with the output of AI tools could have broader implications for copyright law, potentially implying that human writers could be penalized for using others’ work as inspiration. Lawyers for the government compared this to a scenario where a young Joan Didion copied Ernest Hemingway’s stories to learn how to write. Source: wired
The administration’s stance has drawn criticism from authors and publishers, who argue that the government is prioritizing the interests of major AI companies over the rights of creators. The New York Times spokesperson called the government’s position a “gross misunderstanding of the fair use doctrine and copyright law,” while the Author’s Guild expressed disappointment with the letter, calling it “replete with faulty arguments.” Meanwhile, the broader legal battle over AI training on copyrighted material continues, with multiple high-profile lawsuits pending. Source: wired
