News Organizations Tell Court DOJ’s Support for AI Fair Use Conflicts With Copyright Office and Case Facts

# What happened A coalition of news organizations, led by The New York Times, filed a response to a government "letter of interest" in a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft in New York federal court. The government filing had argued that using copyrighted texts to train generative AI systems should be treated as fair use. The news organizations said the government's statement conflicts with the views of the U.S. Copyright Office and with the factual record in the case.

# Who's involved

• Times and other news organizations (named collectively in the litigation).
• Defendants: OpenAI Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
• Third party: The U.S. Department of Justice filed a letter supporting a fair use defense for AI training. The U.S. Copyright Office has expressed a different view.

# Legal positions at issue The core legal question is whether using copyrighted news articles and other protected text to train large language models constitutes fair use. The DOJ told the court that training on copyrighted works should not generally create broad infringement liability for AI developers. The news organizations countered that the DOJ's position conflicts with the Copyright Office's stance and the specific factual allegations in the lawsuit.

# Procedural context This exchange occurs in an active copyright case pending in the Southern District of New York. The suit challenges how OpenAI and Microsoft used copyrighted content to develop generative AI tools. The DOJ's letter was filed as a letter of interest, and the news organizations submitted a formal response addressing that filing.

# Why the disagreement matters

# Concrete implications to watch

• Litigation precedent: A ruling could create binding or persuasive precedent for other AI copyright suits.
• Industry practices: Publishers might alter access controls, licensing terms, or pursue claims to protect text-based content used in model training.
• Government views vs administrative agency: The disagreement highlights divergent positions between the Justice Department and the U.S. Copyright Office on fair use as applied to AI training.

# Bottom line The dispute is focused: news organizations oppose the DOJ's public support for treating AI training on copyrighted text as fair use, citing conflict with the Copyright Office and problems with the DOJ's characterization of the facts in the New York lawsuit. The court's handling of these submissions and its eventual ruling will influence how copyright law applies to AI training going forward.