US Justice Department backs OpenAI in New York Times lawsuit, citing national security

On September 2, the US Department of Justice filed a statement of interest siding with OpenAI and Microsoft in the New York Times copyright lawsuit. The case centers on whether using news articles and other copyrighted works as training data for large language models qualifies as fair use under US law.

Justice Department lawyers argued that the strength of the US AI industry is a matter of national security and economic competitiveness. In their view, imposing strict limits on training data could slow improvements in model quality and hinder research, ultimately weakening the country’s strategic position. At the same time, they did not categorically dismiss publishers’ rights, instead leaving it to the court to decide where the fair‑use line should be drawn.

The lawsuit has become a global test case for how far AI developers may go in using existing content to train generative systems. By explicitly framing AI development as a national security interest, the US government is signaling that it favors a relatively permissive regime. That stance could influence the judge’s decision and shape how other countries craft their own copyright and data‑mining rules for AI.