The Trump administration has officially thrown its weight behind OpenAI in the high-stakes legal tussle with the New York Times, arguing that the future of our favourite tech gadgets relies on training artificial intelligence with existing texts. Filed on Tuesday in a Manhattan federal court, the government’s advisory brief champions the concept of fair use, asserting that restricting AI development would stall scientific breakthroughs and American economic prosperity.
Washington Weighs In on the AI Revolution
For years, tech enthusiasts like myself have marvelled at how large language models—the brains behind our smartest gadgets—ingest billions of lines of text to predict the next word, generating the incredibly useful responses we rely on daily. However, this magical process requires massive amounts of data, leading to a fierce legal battle. The Times, alongside several other newspapers, originally filed suit in 2023, accusing OpenAI and its primary financial backer, Microsoft, of swallowing millions of articles without permission or compensation to train their popular chatbot.
The US government has now stepped into the fray.
While the brief filed on Tuesday carries advisory rather than legally binding weight, it provides a massive morale boost to tech companies currently fending off dozens of similar claims from authors, music labels, and publishers.
“The United States has a strong interest in continuing to develop a robust and competitive artificial intelligence industry that sets the standard for the practice and procedure of AI use globally,” the brief stated. It is critical, the document argued, for the United States to “retain global leadership in artificial intelligence.”
A Fight for National Security and Technological Dominance
The administration’s stance is unapologetically pro-gadget and pro-growth.
US associate attorney general Stanley Woodward Jr took to X to post a statement defending the move. “AI dominance is critical to promote national security, prosperity, and economic mobility for all Americans,” Woodward declared. “This Administration will never let our Nation be at a disadvantage relative to our foreign adversaries based on a plainly incorrect understanding of copyright law.”
The government’s filing agrees with the tech sector’s argument that feeding data into these machine learning systems is “extraordinarily” transformative. It is not merely copying; it is building a new, revolutionary tool. The brief elaborated on the immense value of these systems, noting that they are already helping researchers achieve major breakthroughs. “Constraining LLM development under a misunderstanding of fair use doctrine would thwart such creative and scientific progress while hindering American prosperity and economic mobility,” the document warned.
Spokespeople for both the Times and OpenAI remained tight-lipped when approached for comment on Wednesday.
The Global Stage: G20 and the Path Forward
The legal wrangling is unfolding just as global leaders gather to discuss the very future of this technology. On Wednesday, OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman spoke at the G20 innovation ministerial summit in North Carolina.
During the same event, US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick addressed international officials, urging them to adopt a similarly tech-friendly approach. He advised G20 delegates to embrace fair use frameworks, allowing AI companies to train their models on creators’ work