US Government Backs OpenAI in Massive NYT Copyright Lawsuit

The Trump administration filed a formal statement of interest supporting OpenAI's fair use defense against The New York Times' massive copyright infringement lawsuit. US attorneys specifically argued that restricting AI model training on copyrighted material would severely hamper scientific progress and American economic mobility. The intervention follows a 2025 decision where Anthropic reached a $1.5B settlement with authors over piracy liabilities, highlighting the massive financial stakes of AI training data. Despite the ongoing litigation, dozens of media organizations have already signed licensing agreements, with the Times inking a generative AI deal with Amazon in 2025. "The New York Times seeks to narrow fair-use doctrine to exclude the training of OpenAl’s large language models. That result would be inconsistent with basic copyright law principles." — US attorneys.