Trump supports OpenAI in copyright fight with New York Times
What's the story
The Trump administration has contributed a 20-page brief in support of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. The brief was filed in response to a lawsuit from The New York Times, which accused OpenAI of using copyrighted material without permission to train its large language models (LLMs). "The United States has a strong interest in continuing to develop a robust and competitive artificial intelligence industry that sets the standard for the practice and procedure of AI use globally," the brief said.
Legal complexities
The legal debate over AI training and copyrighted material
The LLMs that power chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are trained on huge databases of published works, including copyrighted books and articles.
These materials are often fed into the databases without permission.
The legal debate over whether AI companies can use copyrighted material to train their models centers around fair use, a provision in copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission under certain circumstances.
Fair use debate
Fair use debate and economic impact
The fair use debate in this case revolves around whether the AI companies' use of copyrighted material is "transformative" enough to be deemed legal by a judge.
The Trump administration's brief argues that limiting LLM development under a misunderstanding of fair use doctrine would hinder creative and scientific progress, as well as American prosperity and economic mobility.
Legal precedents
Rulings in AI training cases
So far, rulings in AI training and copyright infringement cases have mostly favored AI companies.
Last year, a judge ordered Anthropic to pay a $1.5 billion copyright settlement to a group of writers whose works were used without permission to train the company's AI models.
However, Anthropic was not penalized for its AI training but for using illegal shadow libraries to pirate the books it used for training.
Information
Potential impact of the brief on ongoing case
The Trump administration's brief could have an impact on the ongoing case in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The authors of the brief do not have jurisdiction over this case. However, their intervention could carry weight.