DOJ says AI training on news content ‘far outweighs any competitive harm’
The Justice Department on Tuesday entered the legal fight between OpenAI and The New York Times, filing court papers backing the ChatGPT-maker’s argument that training its models on internet-published articles is fair use under copyright law.
In the papers, the department wrote that “the creative possibilities and public benefits” of training large language models on “troves of writings found on the internet” “far outweigh any competitive harm.” The argument mirrors the position OpenAI has pressed in the case — that ingesting millions of news articles to build AI models falls within the fair-use doctrine of copyright law.
The department went further, telling the court that siding with The New York Times and other publishers who argue OpenAI’s practice violates copyright law would thwart “creative and scientific progress while hindering American prosperity and economic mobility.” The language frames the copyright question as one with national scientific and economic consequences.
The New York Times is among the publishers who have challenged OpenAI’s training practices, arguing that the company’s use of their content violates copyright law. The case has drawn broad attention as a test of how the fair-use doctrine applies to machine-learning systems trained on news content.
By backing OpenAI’s legal position, the Justice Department is aligning the federal government with the company’s reading of fair use. The filing marks the Trump administration’s formal entry into the fight over how OpenAI builds its AI technology.