DOJ Says Training AI on IP ‘Is Exceedingly Transformative’

Photo Credit: Numan Ali

With a number of AI copyright battles unfolding – and with billions riding on the all-important fair use question – the Justice Department has doubled down on its position that training LLMs on protected text constitutes fair use.

The DOJ reiterated its training stance yesterday, in a filing submitted as part of an ongoing infringement showdown between the New York Times and OpenAI as well as Microsoft. In motion since late 2023, that case, having received a third amended complaint last month, is straightforward enough.

The way the plaintiff sees things, the defendants built generative models “by copying and using millions of The Times’s copyrighted news articles” before capitalizing on the text to pump out “substitutive products without permission or payment.”

And in the opposite corner, Microsoft and OpenAI are adamant that the described training process constitutes fair use; “Microsoft further admits that its position has been and continues to be that its conduct is protected by the fair use doctrine,” the appropriate company wrote when answering the suit two days ago.

Now, the DOJ, indicating off the bat that the “effective integration of AI will be critical for U.S. national security capabilities,” has weighed in with a 20-page filing underscoring the same fair use take.

As some will recognize, this position isn’t new for the Trump administration, which in March 2026 published a “National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence.” Therein, the White House emphasized the belief “that training of AI models on copyrighted material does not violate copyright laws” – while urging Congress to let the courts “resolve this issue.”

Back to the filing, then, the Justice Department noted its assessment that “
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