Trump Admin Splinters Over AI’s Right To Train On Americans’ Copyrighted Work
The Trump administration appears not to have reached a conclusion on whether artificial intelligence should be able to learn from Americans' work for free.
Dylan Kresak · Sep 7, 2026 · 3 min read
The Trump administration appears not to have reached a conclusion on whether artificial intelligence should be able to learn from Americans’ work for free.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) told a federal judge that AI training on copyrighted books is fair use, and that licensing would only help big labs and “old mainstream media,” according to a Tuesday court filing. That assertion cuts against the White House’s March AI framework, which said that it is still contested whether that training infringes on copyright.
“It is not in the public’s interest for the largest technology companies to have an oligopoly on LLM [Large Language Model] training due to licensing entry barriers that function primarily as large subsidies for old mainstream media companies,” the DOJ filing read. “[T]he United States has a strong interest in this Court rejecting any argument that training LLMs on copyrighted texts violates copyright law.”
The department’s argued OpenAI copies the works to train its models, but not to republish them.
“An OpenAI LLM thus uses the copyrighted work not to duplicate the work’s expressive content, but as part of a process to learn and act on statistical patterns in written text, including vocabulary, syntax, and knowledge,” the DOJ explained. “The purpose of the copying … differs in kind from the purpose of the copied work.”
The DOJ referred the DCNF to a Sept. 2 X post from associate attorney general Stanley E. Woodward Jr., when asked for comment.
“[President Trump] has made clear that AI dominance is critical to promote national security, prosperity, and economic mobility for all Americans,” Woodward said in the post. “This Administration will never let our Nation be at a disadvantage relative to our foreign adversaries based on a plainly incorrect understanding of copyright law.”
The White House and OpenAI each did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
One tech policy expert disagrees with the DOJ’s statement.