The Trump administration, through the Department of Justice, filed a statement of interest on Tuesday in the Southern District of New York, backing OpenAI in its legal dispute with The New York Times. The filing argues that using copyrighted material to train large language models (LLMs) constitutes fair use under U.S. copyright law. This move represents the first instance of the federal government formally weighing in on the numerous copyright lawsuits brought against artificial intelligence developers by authors, publishers, music labels, and news organizations.
The New York Times initially filed its lawsuit in December 2023, accusing OpenAI and its primary financial backer, Microsoft, of unlawfully using millions of its articles to train the LLMs that power ChatGPT. The newspaper claims that OpenAI's AI products can reproduce copyrighted content and compete directly with its journalism, thereby impacting subscription, licensing, and advertising revenue. OpenAI has maintained that its training practices, which involve publicly available data, adhere to longstanding fair use principles and are essential for innovation and maintaining U.S. competitiveness in AI.
The Justice Department's brief, submitted to U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein, asserts that training LLMs on copyrighted text is "extraordinarily transformative" and that the creative possibilities and public benefits derived from such training "far outweigh any competitive harm." Government lawyers contend that LLMs do not reproduce the text they are trained on but instead use it to develop generalized reasoning and language abilities. The filing also emphasizes the national interest, citing scientific research and national security as reasons for the court to favor AI developers. It states that the United States has a strong interest in rejecting arguments that training LLMs on copyrighted texts violates copyright law.
The administration's intervention comes amidst a wave of similar lawsuits against AI companies like OpenAI, Meta Platforms, and Anthropic. These cases largely center on whether the use of copyrighted material for AI training qualifies as fair use, a complex legal question without clear precedent. Two federal judges who considered comparable fair use questions in 2025 reached conflicting conclusions, and no appellate court has yet resolved the applicable standard for AI training.
The brief also warns of potential economic repercussions if fair use is narrowly interpreted. It states that "constraining LLM development under a misunderstanding of fair use doctrine would thwart creative and scientific progress while hindering American prosperity and economic mobility." The Justice Department attorneys further wrote that the "creative benefits often overlap with national security interests," noting that AI models can assist national security officials in analyzing real-world facts conveyed in news articles.
The New York Times criticized the administration's position, with a spokesperson stating that the administration is "siding with a handful of trillion-dollar AI companies" over American creators. The Times argued that both AI and creators can thrive if AI companies fairly compensate for the content that enables their products, as mandated by copyright law. Spokespeople for the White House, OpenAI, and The New York Times did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing.
The lawsuit between The New York Times and OpenAI had previously seen Judge Sidney H. Stein deny OpenAI's motion to dismiss in 2025, finding that the plaintiffs had plausibly alleged that ChatGPT could generate outputs resembling their copyrighted works. However, he did not rule on the fair use question at that time. The Trump administration's statement of interest, while not legally binding, could influence the ongoing proceedings.