Two U.S. Courts Address Fair Use In Generative AI Training Cases

The Situation: Federal courts continue to address whether training artificial intelligence ("AI") models on copyrighted materials without a license constitutes copyright infringement.

The Development: In a single week, two United States District Court judges in the Northern District of California issued decisions addressing fair use in the context of generative AI ("GenAI") training.

Looking Ahead: These decisions are shaping the application of the fair use defense in connection with the use of AI for training purposes. Although both courts recognized the transformative nature of using copyrighted works to train GenAI, the fact-specific nature of the fair use inquiry remains central to the analysis, including the source of the training data and the impact on the market.