Trump administration backs OpenAI in New York Times copyright battle

The US Justice Department filed a statement of interest in the Southern District of New York, siding with OpenAI. Its core argument: training AI on publicly available articles is fair use under copyright law, not infringement. The New York Times had accused OpenAI of illegally copying millions of its articles to train ChatGPT. The DOJ contends that training extracts only non-copyrightable facts, language patterns, and statistical information, not the original expression. The filing is not legally binding but signals the federal government's official stance, which could influence how the court draws fair-use boundaries. The post does not say when a ruling is expected.

Why it matters: The DOJ filed a brief in a landmark AI copyright case with a clear stance and broad implications. HKR all hit, but the brief isn't binding and no ruling timeline is given, capping it at 78, the featured threshold.