The federal government just picked a side in Silicon Valley's biggest copyright fight.
The US government filed a letter backing OpenAI's position that training its models on The New York Times' journalism counts as fair use, not infringement. The filing lands squarely in the middle of the Times' ongoing copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, adding the weight of federal endorsement to arguments the company has been making in court for months. The letter does not settle anything - it is not a ruling - but it signals where the administration stands on a question every AI lab is watching.
Fair use is the legal linchpin the entire generative AI industry is leaning on to justify scraping copyrighted text, images and code without paying for it. A federal government stance in OpenAI's favor gives that argument political cover, even though it carries no binding legal force on the judge deciding the case. Publishers and authors suing other AI companies over similar claims will be watching to see if this becomes a pattern.
Executive-branch opinions aren't precedent, but they're a signal - and this one tells AI companies the current administration is rooting for them, not the publishers whose work trained the machines.