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September 7, 2026
DOJ’s OpenAI Defense Puts the Times’ Copyright Fight on a National-Security Fault Line
The Justice Department sees broad room for AI developers to use copyrighted material, framing the issue as vital to innovation, prosperity and national security. The New York Times sees a government siding with dominant tech companies while publishers and creators bear the cost.
The legal clash began in December 2023, when The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the companies unlawfully used its journalism to train AI systems and seeking billions of dollars in damages. The case quickly became a test of whether copyright law can restrain the data appetite behind generative AI.1
This week, the Trump administration entered the fray with a statement of interest backing OpenAI’s fair-use argument. Justice Department lawyers warned that the Times was trying to narrow the doctrine in a way that would be “inconsistent with basic copyright law principles” and could severely hamper “the Progress of Science and useful Arts.” They argued that large language models are already advancing research, and that restricting their development would undermine scientific progress, economic mobility and American prosperity.1
The Justice Department’s later filing in Manhattan sharpened that position. It said AI development was critical to national security and that training systems transforms underlying written works into something copyright law can permit. In the government’s view, AI’s benefits “far outweigh any competitive harm” — an unusually broad public-interest argument in a private copyright dispute.2
For the Times, that framing reverses the stakes. Graham James, a spokesman for the newspaper, said the department was siding with a handful of “trillion-dollar A.I. companies” over American creators.2 The paper’s position is that innovation should not give AI firms a free pass to absorb publishers’ work without permission or payment.
The court’s eventual ruling could reach far beyond OpenAI: other media companies and creators are watching for an answer to the central question neither side can evade — whether training an AI model is transformative use, or an uncompensated use of the work that made it possible.
[1] The Trump administration is supporting OpenAI in the NYT copyright lawsuit — DOJ lawyers argued the Times’ approach would narrow fair use and hinder scientific and economic progress.
[2] Justice Dept. Sides With OpenAI in New York Times Copyright Suit — The Justice Department called AI development a national-interest issue; the Times said creators were being sidelined.