Artificial Intelligence

DOJ Backs OpenAI in Copyright Battle

Is AI training on copyrighted work outright theft from creators or transformative innovation?

Published SEP 3

story

Above: The New York Times logo displayed on a mobile phone with OpenAI logo in the background. Image credit: Idrees Abbas/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

The Spin

Anti-Trump narrative

The Trump administration has put its thumb on the scale for Big Tech. Courts, not political appointees, should decide whether AI companies can vacuum up journalism without paying for it. Letting corporations steal creative work at scale and call it innovation sets a dangerous precedent for every writer, artist and publisher in America.

Alex Hirsch on X

Jason Kint on X

Pro-Trump narrative

Training AI on written works is transformative fair use under well-established copyright law — the DOJ's filing makes clear that forcing licensing requirements would crush competition, entrench legacy media giants and hand foreign adversaries a massive edge. Restricting LLM development under a flawed reading of copyright would stifle the exact creativity the law was designed to protect. Public benefits outweigh any harm to publishers.

Court Listener

Adam Eisgrau on X