NYT, publishers urge US court to reject DOJ backing for OpenAI
Lawyers representing the New York Times and other leading publishers have asked a US federal court to disregard the Justice Department’s intervention in their copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, arguing that the Trump administration may be biased in favour of the AI company.
The publishers are suing OpenAI for allegedly infringing their copyrights.
Earlier this month, the Justice Department filed a statement supporting OpenAI’s defence, arguing that copying copyrighted material without permission to train large language models can be protected under the “fair use” doctrine.
In a filing on Monday, the publishers said the Justice Department had failed to adequately address a contrary conclusion by the US Copyright Office on the use of copyrighted works to train generative AI systems.
They also argued that the department was seeking to influence the case at an unusually early stage.
The publishers said requiring AI companies to obtain permission and pay for copyrighted material would not significantly undermine the administration’s efforts to advance the technology.
“That the DOJ fails to acknowledge any possible contrary views, and dismisses the Copyright Office’s comprehensive study in a footnote, suggests that the DOJ may have been influenced by extraneous considerations — up to and including the Administration’s political and financial interests,” their lawyers wrote.
The publishers also challenged the Justice Department’s argument that protecting copyrighted material could undermine US national security by slowing the development of advanced AI systems.
They said a ruling against OpenAI’s fair-use claim would not necessarily halt AI development but could instead require companies to obtain permission and compensate copyright owners for using their work.
The publishers further cited a recent cyberattack involving AI agents on the Hugging Face platform and other incidents as evidence of what they described as the industry’s difficulty in controlling its products.
They argued that potential risks from AI development should also be considered alongside the benefits cited by the Justice Department.
The lawsuit was brought by The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers, along with a group of authors including Sylvia Day, John Grisham and George R. R. Martin.
Graham James, a spokesperson for The New York Times, accused the Justice Department of seeking to benefit major technology companies and said its recommendations had been made without consultation with relevant agencies and before key evidence could emerge.
The Justice Department and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. OpenAI also did not immediately respond.