DOJ Backs OpenAI in New York Times Copyright Lawsuit

The U.S. Department of Justice has entered the legal fight between OpenAI and the New York Times, filing a court letter that sides with the AI company on a pivotal copyright question.

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, claiming the companies violated copyright law by training their AI systems on Times articles without authorization. On Tuesday, federal lawyers submitted a letter arguing that the government has a substantial interest in the case because it affects whether the U.S. AI industry can maintain global leadership.

The government's fair use argument

The DOJ letter contends that the Times' interpretation of fair use doctrine contradicts existing copyright law. Government lawyers wrote that restricting large language model development based on a misunderstanding of fair use would "thwart such creative and scientific progress while hindering American prosperity and economic mobility."

The administration characterized AI training on copyrighted material as "extraordinarily transformative," meaning the systems meaningfully alter their inputs rather than simply reproducing them. The letter also argued that OpenAI's models do not directly compete with Times articles—two factors courts weigh when evaluating fair use claims.

Federal lawyers drew an analogy to human learning, comparing AI training to how a young Joan Didion typed out Ernest Hemingway's stories to learn writing techniques. Treating AI training as infringement would create problematic implications for copyright law more broadly, they argued.

Why it matters

This marks the first time the federal government has formally weighed in on the central legal question facing the AI industry: whether training models on copyrighted content without permission violates intellectual property law. While the judge is not required to follow the DOJ's reasoning, intellectual property lawyer Evan Brown told WIRED that courts will likely take the letter seriously given its source. The position signals that the current administration views permissive AI training rules as a national economic priority, potentially influencing how dozens of similar pending cases unfold.

Industry and creator reactions

The New York Times pushed back sharply. Spokesperson Graham James said the administration is "siding with a handful of trillion-dollar AI companies at the expense of the countless American creators whose work they stole," adding that AI companies should pay fairly for content as copyright law requires.

Mary Rasenberger, chief executive of the Authors Guild—which filed its own lawsuit against OpenAI in 2023—called the letter "replete with faulty arguments and a gross misunderstanding of the fair use doctrine."

The broader legal landscape

Dozens of copyright lawsuits against AI companies remain active. Last year produced two significant rulings: Meta technically prevailed in Kadrey v. Meta, though the judge noted plaintiffs failed to prove harm from training. Anthropic lost its case and must pay authors $1.5 billion in damages—the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history—though the judge ruled the training itself was fair use while finding liability for pirating books.

New cases continue emerging. Sony and Warner Music sued Anthropic last week, following an earlier suit from Universal Music Group and others, all alleging their copyrighted material was used without permission to train the Claude AI system.

These details were first reported by WIRED.