Justice Department Takes on OpenAI in New York Times Copyright Suit

The Justice Department told a Manhattan federal court that it is in the national interest for a judge to find that OpenAI did not violate copyright law when it used articles from The New York Times and other publishers to develop artificial intelligence systems.

The filing late Tuesday was the first time the Justice Department has considered the use of copyrighted material by AI companies, which has led to several lawsuits, including one filed by The Times.

The Justice Department has argued that the development of artificial intelligence is essential to national security and that AI training systems have sufficiently transformed written works into new material permitted by copyright law. She said the benefits of AI “far outweigh any competitive harm”.

The government crackdown is an escalation in a landmark lawsuit that could determine whether OpenAI broke the law when it developed its AI systems and harmed the news industry and other content creators.

Stanley Woodward Jr., the Justice Department’s associate attorney general, called the filing a “historic declaration of interest” in a statement posted on social media, adding that President Trump has made it clear that “AI dominance is critical to promoting national security, prosperity and economic mobility for all Americans.”

Graham James, a spokesman for The Times, said in a statement that the Justice Department is siding with a handful of “trillion-dollar AI companies” at the expense of American creators.

“The administration’s proposal to let companies take this content without permission or compensation would undermine the sustainability of the human-generated content on which a healthy society depends and on which artificial intelligence must function,” he said.

OpenAI representatives did not respond to a request for comment. Microsoft, an OpenAI partner and a defendant in The Times’ lawsuit, declined to comment.

The Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in late 2023, alleging that the technology companies illegally used copyrighted material to develop and deploy ChatGPT and other advanced artificial intelligence systems. Other publishers also sued, and many of the cases were consolidated last year in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

OpenAI and Microsoft denied the claims, saying they were converting written works into new material, which would be allowed under copyright law. Judge Sidney H. Stein gave both sides until this Friday to file motions for summary judgment.

The Times’ lawsuit is one of many in a wave of legal action against AI companies over copyright claims.

This week, a group of musicians sued Suno, a start-up that creates songs using artificial intelligence, alleging that the firm used musicians’ voices and imitated their styles without permission. In May, Anthropic agreed to a record $1.5 billion settlement paid to authors and publishers after a judge ruled it illegally downloaded and stored millions of copyrighted books.

The Trump administration, including the Justice Department, has broadly sought to support the growing artificial intelligence sector in the United States and has generally been skeptical of state and federal efforts to regulate the industry.

Administration officials have also discussed the possibility of direct stakes in AI companies in recent months, according to people familiar with the discussion.

Devlin Barrett contributed reporting from Washington.