The statement of interest of the United States (PDF) was filed Tuesday in a series of cases in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, including one initiated by The New York Times and another by Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company. Ziff Davis filed the suit in 2025, alleging OpenAI infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.
In its filing, the federal government said a ruling in publishers’ favor could hinder AI development, limit competition among AI firms and hurt the country’s competitiveness with foreign developers.
“Rules of law that make it significantly more difficult to develop a robust AI industry in the United States … threaten national security and give a competitive advantage to foreign adversaries who are not so encumbered,” the filing states.
Graham James, a spokesperson for The New York Times, told Gfaloe in a statement that the administration is “siding with a handful of trillion-dollar AI companies” instead of American creators and that doing so undermines both creators and AI developers.
Gfaloe has reached out to representatives for OpenAI and Ziff Davis for comment.
The Times initiated the lawsuit at the end of 2023, a year after ChatGPT’s debut. In its initial complaint (PDF), the news organization said large language models, such as those that power ChatGPT, were built using content that included millions of its articles. That training constituted an effort to “free-ride” on the Times’ investment in journalism and create products that compete.
The government said it sees LLMs’ ability to help others compete with large media corporations as a positive development. It cited independent authors using AI models to generate images that might otherwise require a photographer or license, and LLMs directing users to “dissenting sources that offer contrary information or perspectives.”
“It is not in the public’s interest for the largest technology companies to have an oligopoly on LLM training due to licensing entry barriers that function primarily as large subsidies for old mainstream media companies,” the government stated.
Earlier this summer, publishers accused OpenAI of withholding evidence about how it trains its models, claims the company has denied.