3 September 2026

US Justice Department backs OpenAI in New York Times copyright lawsuit

• The Justice Department filed a legal statement supporting OpenAI's argument that training AI models on copyrighted articles qualifies as fair use, a legal doctrine allowing limited use without permission.
• OpenAI and Microsoft are accused of using millions of New York Times articles without permission to train GPT-4, with the Times seeking billions in damages and destruction of the trained models.
• The Justice Department argues that copying text during training differs from the model's outputs, which rarely resemble originals, and that restricting AI training would harm US competitiveness globally.
• The US Copyright Office previously rejected this position, arguing AI training operates at unprecedented scale and commercial speed that exceeds traditional fair use protections.

Where they differ

Both newsletters reported the same core fact identically.

• The Neuron

  framed the legal argument first.

• The Rundown AI

  led with competitive national interest, but neither disagreed on what happened.

What each one reported

The NeuronPete Huang & Grant Harvey

The US Justice Department filed a brief supporting OpenAI in its copyright lawsuit with the New York Times, arguing that AI training on copyrighted material can constitute transformative fair use.

The Rundown AIRowan Cheung

The U.S. government filed a brief supporting OpenAI against the New York Times copyright lawsuit, arguing that limiting fair use for AI training would cause the U.S. to lose its global tech leadership.

Reported by The Decoder, The Guardian, The Verge, Wired