Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...The Trump Justice Department has weighed in on a landmark copyright infringement case against OpenAI, siding with the tech behemoth over the Daily News and other news organizations for the sake of “America’s global AI dominance.”
In Manhattan Federal Court papers filed Tuesday, the DOJ in a “statement of interest” informed the court of its position on the news organizations’ allegation that OpenAI trains its large language models using reporting stolen from journalists, in violation of copyright law, a central dispute in the case. Its position mirrors that of OpenAI’s, arguing that training AI on copied materials amounts to a “transformative” use of the newspapers’ copyrighted work, thereby meeting the fair use standard.
The DOJ, which is not a party to the case, said it was in the nation’s best interest, both in terms of national security and “promoting innovation and free expression,” for the court to find that training LLMs with copyrighted works does not violate copyright laws.
The brief quoted from Trump’s executive order about “removing barriers” to American leadership in AI, citing his policy to “enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.”
“[The] creative possibilities and public benefits that LLM training advances far outweigh any competitive harm (even assuming such harm is cognizable). The entire reasonthat AI models are rapidly reshaping the economy and national security is that they help people, including those working in creative fields, make things and get things done.”
Steven Lieberman, the lawyer leading the Daily News’s representation in the suit, said the government’s position disregarded the Constitution.
“This filing ignores the copyright clause of the United States Constitution, which was authored by our founders in order to protect and incentivize the creation of original works,” Lieberman said.
“It also contradicts the expressed views of the United States Copyright Office. If the Department of Justice wants to support the administration’s effort to ensure the U.S. wins the AI race, then the obvious conclusion is that the people who create content for training AI must be compensated. Without original, professional content, there would be nothing to train large language models.”
The case brought by The News, The New York Times, and affiliated papers in Tribune Publishing and MediaNews Group accuses the tech giant of not only stealing human-produced work to train its models but also regurgitating it without credit and often distorting it in conversations with ChatGPT users. The Authors Guild and a host of best-selling writers are also parties in the consolidated litigation. The court is slated to receive motions for summary judgment from both sides on Friday.
In a statement on X on Wednesday, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward described the DOJ’s brief as historic.
Woodward said President Trump “has made clear that AI dominance is critical to promote national security, prosperity, and economic mobility for all Americans. This Administration will never let our Nation be at a disadvantage relative to our foreign adversaries based on a plainly incorrect understanding of copyright law.”
The News reached out to OpenAI and Microsoft, its codefendant, for comment.