{"id":336745,"date":"2026-09-03T06:18:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T06:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/336745\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T06:18:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T06:18:11","slug":"ny-times-rips-trumps-doj-for-backing-ai-companies-in-class-action-suit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/336745\/","title":{"rendered":"NY Times Rips Trump’s DOJ For Backing AI Companies In Class Action Suit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDonald Trump<\/a> told GOP congressional candidates visiting the White House on Wednesday evening that \u201cthe\u00a0media has gained respect for us, they cannot believe what we\u2019ve done.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe New York Times<\/a> might beg to differ, at least when it comes to artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlmost a day after the Justice Department filed paperwork in federal court backing OpenAI<\/a> in its consolidated copyright infringement battle with the New York Times, Florida and Arkansas papers, The Intercept, other outlets, Ta-Nehisi Coates and a galaxy of scribe stars, the NYT took the tech-lord-friendly administration to the woodshed.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Administration is siding with a handful of trillion-dollar AI companies at the expense of the countless American creators whose work they stole,\u201d Times spokesman Graham James told Deadline tonight.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn this litigation, the New York Times seeks to narrow fair-use doctrine to exclude the training of OpenAI\u2019s large language models,\u201d the DOJ said in its statement of interest filing late Tuesday,<\/a> spotlighting the paper that has proved a thorn in Trump\u2019s paw over and over.<\/p>\n

\n\tStressing the benefits of more powerful American-based AI \u201cfar outweigh any competitive harm,\u201d the filing avoided the politics, personal and otherwise, of the matter but was blunt about its goals. \u201cThe United States has a strong interest in this Court rejecting any argument that training LLMs on copyrighted texts violates copyright law,\u201d the government said.<\/p>\n

\n\tClearly, having previously fought off efforts by OpenAI to get the case tossed<\/a>, the Times sees its copyright and copyright law differently in this potentially pivotal case.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBoth AI and creators can thrive \u2013 AI companies simply need to pay fairly for the content that makes their products possible, as copyright law requires,\u201d James added Wednesday of the nearly three-year old action<\/a>. \u201cThe Administration\u2019s proposal to let companies take that content without permission or compensation would undermine the sustainability of the human-created content that a healthy society depends on, and which AI needs to function.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAssociate Attorney General Stanley Woodward and Assistant AG Brett Shumate don\u2019t quite seem to think that permission the Times cites is part of the real big picture when it comes to AI. In fact, noting their \u201clegal arguments apply similarly to all parties in this litigation and the related cases, including book authors and publishers,\u201d the DOJ brass are very much on the side of doing whatever it takes to make sure\u00a0the ever-growing amounts of content tech companies desire to feed and build their models is available ASAP.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe United States has a strong interest in continuing to develop a robust and competitive artificial intelligence industry that sets the standard for the practice and procedure of AI use globally,\u201d they say in today\u2019s filing. \u201cThe United States thus has a strong interest in the question whether training AI models on written works constitutes \u2018fair use\u2019 under copyright law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"The<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe Department of Justice<\/a> in Washington, DC<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAndrew Harnik\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tEmphasizing that \u201ceffective integration of AI will be critical for U.S. national security capabilities,\u201d the 20-page SOI perhaps overplays its hand as well. <\/p>\n

\n\tStating the obvious that \u201cforeign adversaries have similar goals,\u201d the fed\u2019s focus is briefly but crucially on the power of the laws that govern U.S. copyright. Not in a great way, it seems: \u201cRules of law that make it significantly more difficult to develop a robust AI industry in the United States therefore threaten national security and give a competitive advantage to foreign adversaries who are not so encumbered.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tToday\u2019s filing lets that statement hang there.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking of the human-created content the NYT mentioned in its response today, some of the very human writers facing off against Sam Altman<\/a>\u2018s big-bucks crew include Game of Thrones kingpin George R.R. Martin<\/a>,\u00a0John Grisham<\/a>, Bosch creator Michael Connelly, \u00a0Jonathan Franzen<\/a> and Jodi Picoult, plus Sarah Silverman<\/a> and the Authors Guild<\/a>. David Baldacci, Mary Bly, Sylvia Day, Elin Hilderbrand, Christina Baker Kline, Maya Shanbhag Lang, Victor LaValle, Douglas Preston, Roxana Robinson, George Saunders, Scott Turow, and Rachel Vail are also in the mix.<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite billions in expenditures with no real profits to show for it, OpenAI is widely expected to unveil an IPO soon. The state of Florida may have gone after OpenAI in court in June <\/a>for the\u00a0\u201cgreat danger of addiction, cognitive decline, suicide, violence, and related harms,\u201d but that didn\u2019t stop the Altman-run company filing IPO paperwork with the SEC the same month.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for the NYC-based copyright action, there could be a big public moves sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn August 31, Judge Sidney H. Stein said\u00a0in the court docket \u201cPlaintiff is ordered to show cause in writing on or before September 11, 2026, why this action should not be stayed pending resolution of summary judgment motions in the other active cases in this multi-district litigation\u201d He added: \u201cDefendants\u2019 response, if any, shall be filed by September 18, 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSeptember 11 this year is the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attack on NYC\u2019s World Trade Center towers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump told GOP congressional candidates visiting the White House on Wednesday evening that \u201cthe\u00a0media has gained respect…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75739,383,153,126516,126517,9,11,10,980,3605,3607,126325],"class_list":["post-336745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-artifical-intelligence","tag-department-of-justice","tag-donald-trump","tag-george-r-r-martin","tag-john-grisham","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-times","tag-openai","tag-sam-altman","tag-sarah-silverman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}