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WASHINGTON — <\/span>The Trump administration is wading into a legal fight between OpenAI and the New York Times<\/a>, backing the ChatGPT-maker’s argument in a closely watched case<\/a> over how it builds its AI technology by ingesting and processing millions of news articles.<\/p>\n In court papers filed Tuesday, the Justice Department supported OpenAI’s argument that training its models on troves of writings found on the internet is protected by the \u201cfair use\u201d doctrine of copyright law.<\/p>\n The Justice Department wrote that \u201cthe creative possibilities and public benefits\u201d of training large language models on such content \u201cfar outweigh any competitive harm.\u201d <\/p>\n It told the court that siding with The New York Times and other publishers who argue OpenAI’s practice violates copyright law would thwart \u201ccreative and scientific progress while hindering American prosperity and economic mobility.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThe entire reason that 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,\u201d Justice Department attorneys wrote. The \u201ccreative benefits often overlap with national security interests,\u201d the department added, because AI models can \u201chelp national security officials analyze and draw inferences from (unprotected) real-world facts such as those conveyed in New York Times articles.\u201d <\/p>\n The lawsuit, and the government’s involvement in it, are symptoms of something happening all over the world, particularly in recent months: the rush to keep up with the rapid rise of AI tools over the past five years. In many cases, disputes about AI and its practices<\/a> are winding their way through courts that still lack precedents \u2014 and in some cases language \u2014 to match the subject matter. <\/p>\n The New York Times said Wednesday that the administration \u201cis siding with a handful of trillion-dollar AI companies at the expense of the countless American creators whose work they stole.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBoth AI and creators can thrive \u2014 AI companies simply need to pay fairly for the content that makes their products possible, as copyright law requires,\u201d Graham James, a spokesperson for the paper, said in an emailed statement. \u201cThe Administration\u2019s proposal to let companies take that content without permission or compensation would undermine the sustainability of the human-created content that a healthy society depends on, and which AI needs to function.\u201d<\/p>\n The Times sued OpenAI in 2023, arguing that the company was threatening its journalists\u2019 livelihoods by effectively stealing billions of dollars\u2019 worth of their work, in some cases spitting out The Times\u2019 material verbatim to people seeking answers from generative artificial intelligence like ChatGPT. The threat to news publications became even more apparent when, in 2024, Google introduced AI-generated summaries at the top of online search results, cutting off the advertising dollars that come when people click a link to the information\u2019s original source.<\/p>\n The Times has since been joined by other news organizations, including MediaNews Group-owned newspapers<\/a> the New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune, digital media publisher Ziff Davis and the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting<\/a>. The company has been sued by several writers \u2014 including comedian Sarah Silverman \u2014 who say their books were ingested to train OpenAI\u2019s AI models without their permission.<\/p>\n The Times\u2019 arguments differ from those brought by book authors. In its original lawsuit and an amended complaint filed earlier this year, it focused on the unfair competition of companies that \u201cseek to free-ride on The Times\u2019s massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n