Trump admin backs OpenAI ‘fair use’ argument in suit from New York Times

The Trump administration's decision to back OpenAI in its fair use fight with The New York Times elevates a high-stakes legal dispute into a defining policy clash over the future of American innovation. At its core, the case asks a deceptively simple question: is ingesting millions of copyrighted articles to train an AI model a transformative act of fair use, or is it the unauthorized reproduction of someone else's labor? The answer will ripple far beyond this single lawsuit, setting precedents that touch every publisher, artist, and coder in the digital economy. OpenAI and its supporters argue that AI training mirrors how humans read, learn, and synthesize information from the world around them. If the Times wins, they warn, every AI developer could face a whiplash of litigation that chokes off access to the very corpus of human knowledge that makes these tools useful. The administration's filing aligns with this view, framing aggressive AI development as a national security and economic imperative. It is a forward-looking argument, one that prioritizes the potential of emergent technology over the traditional protections of the copyright bar. The Times counters with a more visceral, backward-looking grievance: OpenAI is building a product that competes directly with its own journalism, profiting from millions of articles produced at significant cost and risk. Reporters in war zones, investigators poring over public records, and editors shaping complex stories do not write to train machines to replace them. The loss of licensing revenue, the dilution of brand authority, and the existential threat to the news industry's business model are not abstractions—they are existential realities that the Times has a duty to fight. What makes this moment so pivotal is that it is not a battle between two political tribes, but a collision of two value systems: the disruptive power of technological progress and the preservation of creative industries through property rights. The outcome will determine whether America's AI giants can freely harvest the digital commons, or whether the owners of that commons get a say—and a share—of the upside. For readers who rely on both credible news and cutting-edge technology, this is not a spectator sport. It is the contract that will define the information age. Source: [The Hill – Trump admin backs OpenAI 'fair use' argument in suit from New York Times](https://thehill.com/homenews/media/6066304-ny-times-openai-ai-lawsuit/)