US Government Tells Court AI Training on News Articles Is Fair Use
News Summary
The United States government has formally entered one of the most closely watched copyright disputes in the artificial intelligence industry, filing a statement of interest that backs OpenAI's position in a lawsuit brought by The New York Times. The filing, submitted on September 2, 2026 (Eastern Time) with U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein in the Southern District of New York, marks the first time the federal government has directly weighed in on the wave of copyright cases filed against AI developers over how their models are trained.
What the Government Argued
In its filing, the administration argued that training large language models (LLMs) on copyrighted text is "extraordinarily" transformative and should be treated as fair use under U.S. copyright law. The government's statement said it has "a strong interest in this court rejecting any argument that training LLMs on copyrighted texts violates copyright law," citing concerns tied to scientific advancement and national security.
The filing went further, warning that a narrow reading of fair use doctrine could have consequences beyond the courtroom. It argued that "constraining LLM development under a misunderstanding of fair use doctrine would thwart... creative and scientific progress while hindering American prosperity" and economic opportunity. The core of the government's position is that plaintiffs — including authors, publishers, and news organizations — are pushing for an interpretation of fair use that is too restrictive and would functionally require AI companies to license nearly all training data, a requirement the filing suggests would slow the development of a "robust" domestic AI industry.
Background on the Lawsuit
The case traces back to 2023, when The New York Times sued OpenAI and its largest financial backer, Microsoft, alleging that millions of the newspaper's articles were used without permission or compensation to train the models behind ChatGPT and related products. The Times has argued that this practice undermines the business model that supports professional journalism and violates its exclusive rights as a copyright holder.
The Times case is not an isolated dispute. It is one of several coordinated proceedings before Judge Stein in the Southern District of New York, part of a broader wave of litigation brought by authors, publishers, music labels, and other news outlets against major AI developers, including separate cases involving Anthropic and Meta. Two federal judges have previously issued diverging rulings on whether AI training on copyrighted works qualifies as fair use, leaving the legal landscape unsettled and increasing the significance of any outside party's position — particularly one from the federal government.
Reaction From The New York Times
A spokesperson for The New York Times pushed back sharply on the administration's filing, saying the government was "siding with a handful of trillion-dollar AI companies at the expense of the countless American creators whose work they stole." The spokesperson added that allowing companies to use copyrighted content without permission would "undermine the sustainability of the human-created content that a healthy society depends on."
Representatives for OpenAI and the White House did not immediately provide additional comment beyond the filing itself when it was first reported.
Why This Matters for the AI Industry
Statements of interest filed by the federal government carry significant weight in litigation, even though they are not binding on the court. They signal how the executive branch views a legal question with broad economic and policy implications, and they can influence how judges weigh competing arguments in complex, first-of-their-kind cases. Because dozens of similar copyright lawsuits are pending against other AI companies, the government's position in the OpenAI case is likely to be cited — by both plaintiffs and defendants — in related litigation across the country.
For the broader AI research and technology community, the filing underscores how central the question of training-data fair use has become to the industry's future. Universities, research labs, and startups worldwide are watching how U.S. courts define the boundaries of fair use for machine learning, since the outcome could shape whether large-scale AI training remains broadly accessible or becomes constrained by licensing requirements. The case, still in its early stages of coordinated pretrial proceedings, is expected to continue generating rulings that will be closely studied by legal scholars, technologists, and policymakers around the world as they work through how existing copyright frameworks apply to generative AI systems.