The Trump Administration Just Took OpenAI's Side in the New York Times Copyright Case

Key points

• The Trump administration filed a legal statement in December 2023-originated New York Times vs. OpenAI lawsuit, backing OpenAI's fair-use defence.
• The Times is seeking "billions of dollars" in damages from both OpenAI and Microsoft over the use of its articles to train AI systems.
• A separate 2025 court ruling allowed Anthropic to train its AI on legally purchased books, but still produced a $1.5 billion settlement with authors over pirated copies.
• Dozens of news outlets, including the Associated Press and Vox Media, have signed paid licensing deals with OpenAI rather than sue.
• The outcome of the Times case could set a legal precedent affecting every media company whose work AI companies have used.

The federal government stepped into one of the most closely watched AI lawsuits in the country this week, filing what is called a statement of interest, a document where the government tells a court its view of the law without being a party to the case itself. Its view: OpenAI did nothing wrong.

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023, claiming the companies used millions of Times articles, without permission, to train large language models, the technology behind chatbots like ChatGPT. The Times wants "billions of dollars" in damages.

What exactly did the government argue?

Federal attorneys said the Times is trying to shrink a longstanding legal principle called fair use, which allows limited copying of copyrighted material without payment when it serves a broader public good.

"Constraining LLM development under a misunderstanding of fair use doctrine would thwart creative and scientific progress while hindering American prosperity and economic mobility," the government's filing states. In plain terms: let AI companies keep training on published text, or slow down American science.

The Trump administration has filed similar statements in other cases and openly views AI training as fair use. That position also appears in its National AI Legislative Framework. It is worth noting that President Trump has his own defamation lawsuit against the Times, which is not connected to this case but is not exactly background noise either.

What does this mean for journalists, authors, and anyone who publishes online?

A lot hangs on this case. If the court sides with the Times, AI companies would likely need licences, and payments, before training on copyrighted text. If the court sides with OpenAI, the current practice continues largely unchecked.

The picture is already mixed. A judge ruled in 2025 that Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, could legally train its models on books it had purchased. But Anthropic still ended up in a $1.5 billion settlement with authors because some training material had been pirated.

Meanwhile, many news organisations have chosen deals over lawsuits. The Associated Press, Axel Springer, and Vox Media all signed licensing agreements with OpenAI. The Times itself struck a 2025 deal with Amazon letting its content appear in Amazon's AI tools, even while its OpenAI lawsuit continues.

Organisation	Action taken
New York Times	Sued OpenAI (Dec 2023); licensed to Amazon (2025)
Associated Press	Signed licensing deal with OpenAI
Axel Springer	Signed licensing deal with OpenAI
Vox Media	Signed licensing deal with OpenAI
Authors guild (Anthropic case)	$1.5 billion settlement (2025)

First reported by The Verge AI, the government's filing also acknowledged that fair-use questions depend on specific facts, not blanket rules. That leaves the door open for future cases to land differently.

Here is the honest takeaway: if you create written work for a living, watch this case. The Times has the resources to push it all the way. Whatever a judge decides will be the closest thing to settled law any writer or publisher has had on this question.