NY Times Rips Trump's DOJ For Backing AI Companies In Class Action Suit

The New York Times sharply criticized the Trump administration's Justice Department for filing a statement of interest in federal court supporting OpenAI in its copyright infringement lawsuit against the Times, Florida and Arkansas papers, The Intercept, and numerous authors. The DOJ argued that the United States has a strong interest in rejecting arguments that training large language models on copyrighted texts violates copyright law, emphasizing that the benefits of powerful American-based AI outweigh competitive harm. In response, a Times spokesman stated that the Administration is siding with a handful of trillion-dollar AI companies at the expense of countless American creators whose work they stole. The filing highlighted the involvement of high-profile authors such as George R.R. Martin, John Grisham, and Jonathan Franzen, alongside the Authors Guild, who contend that AI companies must pay fairly for the content that makes their products possible. The Times maintains that allowing companies to take content without permission or compensation would undermine the sustainability of human-created content, which is essential for a healthy society and AI function. The legal battle, which began nearly three years ago, is part of a multi-district litigation, with a court date set for September 11, 2026.

(Source：Deadline)