Trump Administration Backs OpenAI in NYT Copyright Suit

The Trump administration has officially thrown its weight behind OpenAI in the high-stakes copyright lawsuit filed by The New York Times in December 2023. In a newly filed statement of interest, federal attorneys argued that training large language models on copyrighted text constitutes fair use. The lawsuit, which also names Microsoft as a defendant, seeks billions of dollars in damages, alleging that OpenAI unlawfully used the publication's articles to train its systems.

According to the government's filing, restricting the development of large language models under a narrow interpretation of fair use would "severely hamper" scientific progress, as US attorneys wrote in the statement. They asserted that imposing broad copyright liability on AI training without licensing would be legally incorrect. This stance aligns with the administration's National AI Legislative Framework, which previously advocated for AI training as fair use, though the intervention also comes amid President Trump's ongoing personal defamation lawsuit against the Times.

The outcome of this case will establish a critical precedent for the AI industry, which is currently facing numerous copyright disputes. Other publishers, including the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Chicago Tribune, and the New York Daily News, have also sued AI developers. While some companies have faced massive penalties—such as Anthropic's recent $1.5 billion settlement with authors over piracy claims despite a 2025 ruling that it could legally train on purchased books—others have opted for partnerships. OpenAI has secured licensing agreements with organizations like The Associated Press, Axel Springer, and Vox Media, while the Times itself signed a 2025 deal with Amazon.

For AI practitioners and developers, the government's intervention provides a significant boost to the legal viability of training models on public web data. If the court adopts the administration's view, it will reduce the looming threat of multi-billion-dollar copyright liabilities for startups and researchers who rely on web-scraping. However, until a final ruling is issued, developers must navigate a fragmented landscape where licensing deals remain the safest path to securing high-quality training data without risking litigation.