The DOJ Filed a Brief Telling a Federal Court That Training LLMs on Copyrighted Text Is Fair Use

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The Trump administration filed a brief in Manhattan federal court on September 1 supporting OpenAI against the New York Times and other newspapers, arguing that "training of LLMs on written works is exceedingly transformative" and that the United States has a strong interest in the court rejecting any argument that it violates copyright. TechCrunch reports this appears to be the first time the federal government has weighed in on the wave of AI training cases brought by authors, publishers, music labels and news outlets. The brief does not bind the judge or decide the case, but it puts institutional weight behind the core legal theory every model developer is relying on.