The Trump Administration just took OpenAI’s side in the artificial intelligence company’s legal battle with the New York Times.

The media juggernaut sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, alleging that the companies had violated copyright law by training their AI tools on its articles without permission. Now, the government has stepped in, arguing that OpenAI’s actions were within bounds.

On Tuesday, the federal government submitted a letter to the court stating that the United States has a “strong interest” in whether AI training on copyright works is considered “fair use,” because it connects to whether the country’s AI industry can “retain global leadership in artificial intelligence.” (The “fair use” rule shields certain uses of copyrighted materials.)

The letter argued that the Times’ definition of fair use is “inconsistent” with current copyright law, and that a win for the paper could have disastrous consequences. “Constraining LLM development under a misunderstanding of fair use doctrine would thwart such creative and scientific progress while hindering American prosperity and economic mobility,” lawyers for the government wrote.

While the letter focuses on the New York Times and OpenAI, the government noted that its arguments apply to all of the parties in this case and related cases, including other publishers and authors.

Training LLMs on copyrighted works is considered “extraordinarily transformative,” meaning that these systems meaningfully change their inputs, the administration argued. The administration also wrote that OpenAI’s LLMs do not significantly compete with The New York Times’ articles. Courts consider both of these conditions, as well as others, when deciding if the fair use doctrine is met.

Conflating AI traini...