Trump administration backs OpenAI in New York Times copyright suit

The Trump administration filed an advisory brief in Manhattan federal court supporting OpenAI in the New York Times’ copyright case, arguing that training AI models on copyrighted text is protected fair use and vital to U.S. competitiveness. The Times alleges OpenAI and backer Microsoft used millions of its articles without permission; similar suits have been brought by authors, music labels, and other publishers against OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta. The government characterized AI training as “extraordinarily” transformative and warned that restricting it would hinder innovation and economic growth. Senior officials also urged G20 counterparts to embrace fair use while seeking ways to compensate creators. The dispute centers on whether ingesting protected works to build models constitutes fair use—an issue on which courts have issued mixed early rulings with broad implications for the tech and media industries.

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