TL;DR: On September 2, 2026, the Trump administration filed Justice Department papers backing OpenAI and Microsoft against The New York Times, arguing training AI on news articles is fair use.
Justice Department enters the OpenAI-Times fight
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is wading into a legal fight between OpenAI and The New York Times, backing the ChatGPT-maker's argument in a closely watched case over how it builds its AI technology by ingesting and processing millions of news articles, according to AP News.
In court papers filed Tuesday, the Justice Department supported OpenAI's argument that training its models on troves of writings found on the internet is protected by the "fair use" doctrine of copyright law, according to AP News.
The filing was updated at 1:12 PM MDT on September 2, 2026, in a report from Washington by Alanna Durkin Richer for AP News.
Reuters reported the same intervention on September 2, 2026, at 2:53 PM UTC, in a report by Blake Brittain, describing the action as a brief supporting OpenAI in its dispute with The New York Times and other newspapers.
The government is not a party to the case, which the Times brought against the tech companies in 2023, but court rules allow the Justice Department to make a statement in the litigation, according to The Washington Post.
The Washington Post reported on September 2, 2026, by Miriam Waldvogel, that the Justice Department sided with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Microsoft in the lawsuit brought by The New York Times, with lawyers for the government asserting that the success of America's artificial intelligence industry is an important national security interest.
That lawsuit names OpenAI and Microsoft as defendants and centers on the training of AI on the newspaper's content, according to The Washington Post.
The case is pending before a Manhattan judge and includes several other plaintiffs in addition to The Times, including daily papers owned by Alden Global Capital, high-profile book authors, and smaller nonprofit newsrooms like The Intercept, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
A sign for The New York Times hangs above the entrance to its building in New York, as shown in a file photograph taken May 6, 2021, by Mark Lennihan for AP News.
The OpenAI logo was shown in an illustration created on June 11, 2026, by Dado Ruvic for Reuters.
What the Tuesday filing asks the court to do
In the Tuesday court filing, the government's lawyers urged a judge to reject the Times's arguments that the training of AI on the newspaper's content violated copyright law, according to The Washington Post.
The U.S. government filed a statement in support of OpenAI in its legal battle with The New York Times and other publishers, arguing that training on news content is within the bounds of "fair use" under U.S. copyright law, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Sept. 2, 2026, at 3:01 pm ET, by Alexandra Bruell, that Trump administration officials say limiting AI companies' ability to train on content creates national-security concerns.
Making it more difficult for large language models to train on copyrighted content would be "inconsistent with basic copyright law principles" and thwart creative and scientific progress, according to a letter submitted by Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. and Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate from the Justice Department, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The Department of Justice voiced its support through a statement of interest filed with the Manhattan judge overseeing the case, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The Nieman Journalism Lab reported on Sept. 2, 2026, at 4:22 p.m., by Andrew Deck, that the Trump administration threw its support behind OpenAI, backing the AI giant in its ongoing litigation with The New York Times.
The filing says the DOJ's decision to intervene is an attempt to ensure that American AI companies remain "competitive" and are free to "develop a robust AI industry," according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
Training AI on the newspaper's content doesn't violate copyright law, the Justice Department argues, calling the industry a national security interest, according to The Washington Post.
The core copyright claim: training as fair use
The central copyright claim in the filing is that large language model training on copyrighted newspaper material is transformative and therefore covered by fair use, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
In its review of case law, the Trump administration largely reproduces a reading of "fair use" that has been put forward in court by many of the biggest AI players, including OpenAI, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
It argues that LLM development is "transformative," meaning that the model and its outputs are different enough from original news articles and other content ingested from news publishers to constitute something "new," or create a different "utility" than the original works, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
OpenAI's models aren't trying to "directly entertain or educate" the way a Times article does, the administration argues, but are instead performing tasks like writing, translating, and solving problems, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The Justice Department wrote that "the creative possibilities and public benefits" of training large language models on such content "far outweigh any competitive harm," according to AP News.
It told the court that siding with The New York Times and other publishers who argue OpenAI's practice violates copyright law would thwart "creative and scientific progress while hindering American prosperity and economic mobility," according to AP News.
A court finding that training large language models on copyrighted material isn't covered by "fair use," the DOJ says, would "threaten national security," "give a competitive advantage to foreign adversaries," and thwart "creative and scientific progress while hindering American prosperity," according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The filing makes grand pronouncements about the harms that could come from a ruling in favor of The New York Times and the other plaintiffs in the news industry, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
National security and economic arguments
"The entire reason that AI models are rapidly reshaping the economy and national security is that they help people, including those working in creative fields, make things and get things done," Justice Department attorneys wrote, according to AP News.
The "creative benefits often overlap with national security interests," the department added, because AI models can "help national security officials analyze and draw inferences from (unprotected) real-world facts such as those conveyed in New York Times articles," according to AP News.
Lawyers for the government asserted that the success of America's artificial intelligence industry is an important national security interest, according to The Washington Post.
Trump administration officials say limiting AI companies' ability to train on content creates national-security concerns, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The DOJ's decision to intervene is framed as an attempt to ensure that American AI companies remain competitive and are free to develop a robust AI industry, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The filing argues that large publishers will disproportionately benefit if AI companies have to pay to use copyrighted content, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
Another argument in the filing is that if OpenAI loses, all AI companies would need to pay licensing fees, disproportionately benefiting legacy media outlets due to "the sheer volume of their written publications," according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
"It is not in the public's interest for the largest technology companies to have an oligopoly on LLM training due to licensing entry barriers that function primarily as large subsidies for old mainstream media companies," the DOJ claims, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
Training versus outputs
The filing acknowledges the Times' claim that ChatGPT has been used to reproduce the Times' copyrighted material in its entirety, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
But it dismisses that concern as irrelevant, arguing that the litigation concerns the training of LLMs, not their outputs, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The filing argues that the models' most common uses should be separated from "how persons might hypothetically or anomalously" use ChatGPT, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
That distinction places the legal focus on ingestion and processing of millions of news articles to build the technology, rather than on individual instances in which a chatbot output matched a Times article, according to AP News and the Nieman Journalism Lab.
In court papers filed Tuesday, the Justice Department supported OpenAI's argument that training its models on troves of writings found on the internet is protected by the fair use doctrine, rather than treating alleged reproductions in outputs as the central copyright question, according to AP News and the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The government is not a party to the case brought in 2023, but used the statement of interest to present that training-focused reading of fair use to the Manhattan judge, according to The Washington Post and the Nieman Journalism Lab.
Claims about newsroom use of AI
The filing also cites the Times' own LLM use as a reason to side with OpenAI in the case, arguing that LLMs "help people, including those working in creative fields, make things and get things done," according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The filing cites and quotes a Futurism article, arguing that it shows "authors at the New York Times itself are using LLMs to help them 'conceptualize and edit' articles," according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
That phrase from the Futurism story references a controversy earlier this year when a freelance contributor used AI to structure and edit her first draft of a "Modern Love" column, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The Times requires substantial AI use to be disclosed to readers, even from freelancers, but no disclosure appeared in that column and it is unclear if the freelancer's editors knew about her AI use before the column was published, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The Nieman Journalism Lab noted that its author has reported on how the Times has used LLMs in Pulitzer-winning investigations and to source leads for beat reporters, and that sometimes the newsroom has used GPT models.
Argument about small publishers
The DOJ also argues that a ruling in favor of The New York Times would hurt small and independent news publishers, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
Underresourced newsrooms can use LLMs "to compete," the filing says — "by, for example, using an LLM to generate an image to accompany an article — which otherwise might require a photographer or license" or by "directing users to dissenting sources that offer contrary information," according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The filing therefore presents LLMs as tools that help people, including those working in creative fields, make things and get things done, with creative benefits that the department says often overlap with national security interests, according to AP News and the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The filing's small-publisher argument connects that claimed creative benefit to competition, asserting that underresourced newsrooms can use LLMs to compete without paying for a photographer or license for an accompanying image, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The filing's licensing argument adds that requiring AI companies to pay licensing fees would disproportionately benefit legacy media outlets because of the sheer volume of their written publications, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The DOJ claims it is not in the public's interest for the largest technology companies to have an oligopoly on LLM training due to licensing entry barriers that function primarily as large subsidies for old mainstream media companies, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
How the Times and other plaintiffs responded
The Times criticized the government's position, according to AP News.
"The Administration is siding with a handful of trillion-dollar companies at the expense of the countless American creators whose work they stole," said Graham James, a spokesperson for the Times, in a statement, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
"Both AI and creators can thrive — AI companies simply need to pay fairly for the content that makes their products possible, as copyright law requires," said Graham James, a spokesperson for the Times, in a statement, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
"If the administration's position was accepted, it would result in an unprecedented, uncompensated transfer of IP rights from news organizations to tech companies," said Matt Topic, a lawyer at Loevy & Loevy who is representing The Intercept in the case, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The Intercept is one of the smaller nonprofit newsrooms that are plaintiffs alongside The Times, daily papers owned by Alden Global Capital, and high-profile book authors, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The Times brought the case against the tech companies in 2023, and the government is not a party but intervened through the statement of interest, according to The Washington Post.
The Justice Department's Tuesday filing urged the judge to reject the Times's arguments that training AI on the newspaper's content violated copyright law, according to The Washington Post.
The U.S. government filing argued that training on news content is within the bounds of fair use under U.S. copyright law, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The dispute reflects a broader rush to keep up with the rapid rise of AI tools over the past five years, with disputes about AI and its practices arising around the world, particularly in recent months, according to AP News.