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ARTICLE · 04 SEPTEMBER 2026

U.S. Government Backs Fair Use For AI Training In OpenAI Copyright Litigation

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The U.S. government has filed a Statement of Interest of the United States of America under 28 U.S.C. § 517 in the Southern District of New York multidistrict litigation over OpenAI’s use of copyrighted works to train large language models. The filing appears to be the federal government’s first direct intervention in the wave of artificial intelligence (AI) training copyright cases, and it advises the court to treat model training (separate from use of AI to generate outputs) on copyrighted text standing alone as a highly transformative fair use under current law.

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Background

The U.S. government has filed a Statement of Interest of the United States of America under 28 U.S.C. § 517 in the Southern District of New York multidistrict litigation over OpenAI’s use of copyrighted works to train large language models. The filing appears to be the federal government’s first direct intervention in the wave of artificial intelligence (AI) training copyright cases, and it advises the court to treat model training (separate from use of AI to generate outputs) on copyrighted text standing alone as a highly transformative fair use under current law.

Previously, the U.S. Copyright Office released its prepublication “Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Part 3: Report on Generative AI Training” in May 2025 under Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, following earlier report installments on digital replicas and copyrightability. As discussed in our May 2025 client alert, the Part 3 report treated the application of fair use to generative AI training as a

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