Trump administration backs OpenAI in New York Times copyright lawsuit

Federal intervention in Manhattan court

The United States Department of Justice intervened on Tuesday in a copyright dispute between OpenAI and news publishers in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. In a 20-page statement of interest, government attorneys backed the ChatGPT maker's argument that ingesting publicly available internet writings to train artificial intelligence models falls under the fair use doctrine of copyright law. The filing marks the first time the federal government has weighed in on the series of lawsuits brought by authors, music labels, and news outlets against artificial intelligence developers. Government lawyers stated that the creative possibilities and public benefits of training large language models far outweigh any competitive harm to publishers.

The United States has a strong interest in this court rejecting any argument that training LLMs on copyrighted texts violates copyright law.

National security and market considerations

The Justice Department argued that training artificial intelligence systems transforms written works into new material rather than replicating original text. Government attorneys tied the development of language models directly to national security interests, noting that intelligence analysts rely on artificial intelligence tools to evaluate facts, enhance weapons systems, and formulate battlefield recommendations such as missile targeting. The brief stated that legal rules restricting domestic model training would grant competitive advantages to foreign adversaries. The filing also asserted that requiring licensing fees would create subsidies for legacy media outlets while restricting artificial intelligence development to a small group of well-funded corporations that can afford data access agreements. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr. stated on social media that the president views dominance in artificial intelligence as necessary for economic mobility and national security.

Publisher opposition to the filing

The New York Times criticized the government filing on Wednesday, arguing that the administration is supporting wealthy technology corporations over independent writers and journalists. The publication stated that permitting commercial technology firms to absorb protected editorial material without licensing agreements threatens the economic viability of independent journalism. Spokesperson Graham James responded to the Justice Department submission on behalf of the newspaper.

Both AI and creators can thrive -- AI companies simply need to pay fairly for the content that makes their products possible, as copyright law requires. The Administration's proposal to let companies take that content without permission or compensation would undermine the sustainability of the human-created content that a healthy society depends on, and which AI needs to function.

Legal background and industry disputes

The New York Times initially filed suit against OpenAI and its primary financial backer, Microsoft, in late 2023, alleging unauthorized use of millions of articles to build ChatGPT. Similar lawsuits from other publishers were consolidated in the Manhattan federal court in 2025, while related claims have been filed against technology companies including Anthropic, Meta Platforms, and Suno. The administration's brief departs from findings released in 2025 by the federal Copyright Office, which concluded that ingesting large collections of existing works to generate competing outputs exceeded established fair use boundaries. That same year, Judge William Alsup required Anthropic to pay a $1.5 billion settlement for using shadow libraries to obtain training data, while noting that model training itself remained transformative. Representatives for OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday, while Microsoft declined to comment on the filing.