US Government Sides With OpenAI in Copyright Training Fight

The Trump administration filed a 20-page brief defending unlicensed AI training as critical to American leadership.

Published: 2026-09-03 Category: Quick Take Sources: TechCrunch

The Story

In the copyright lawsuit The New York Times filed against OpenAI, the Trump administration has contributed a 20-page brief in defense of the ChatGPT maker's unlicensed use of copyrighted material to train its LLMs. The brief argues the United States has "a strong interest in continuing to develop a robust and competitive artificial intelligence industry" and that it is "critical" to "retain global leadership in artificial intelligence."

The core legal question — can you train an AI on copyrighted material? — hinges on fair use, and specifically whether AI companies' use of copyrighted work is "transformative" enough to be legal. The brief argues that "constraining LLM development under a misunderstanding of fair use doctrine would thwart such creative and scientific progress while hindering American prosperity."

Why It Matters

This is a signal, not a ruling. The brief carries no jurisdiction — the case is being tried in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York — but the executive branch weighing in on the side of AI companies could carry weight with judges and shape the broader legal climate.

So far, cases about AI training and copyright have largely favored AI companies. Last year Judge William Alsup ordered Anthropic to pay a $1.5 billion settlement to writers — but notably, Anthropic wasn't dinged for training itself. It was fined for using illegal shadow libraries to pirate books. Alsup compared LLM training to a human reading a book: learning "to turn a hard corner and create something different."

The Takeaway

The administration's intervention reframes AI training as a matter of national competitiveness rather than just a copyright dispute. That framing could influence how courts weigh the "transformative use" argument going forward — and it signals that the US government is willing to put its thumb on the scale for AI labs in the defining legal battle of the AI era.

Source: TechCrunch, "US government sides with OpenAI on issue of training LLMs on copyrighted material" (Sept 2, 2026).