CONFIRMED

The US Department of Justice filed a statement of interest on September 1, 2026, in the copyright lawsuit between the New York Times and the pairing of Microsoft and OpenAI, telling Judge Sidney Stein of the Southern District of New York that training language models on copyrighted text falls under the fair use doctrine of US law. The filing was confirmed by the Washington Post, Bloomberg Law, Deadline, GVWire, Tech Times and Cryptopolitan.

What the government's filing says

According to the Washington Post, the DOJ document argues that the United States has a direct interest in maintaining a robust and competitive artificial intelligence industry capable of setting the global standard for AI development and use. The filing holds that training AI systems sufficiently transforms the works used as training material, which would qualify as fair use rather than illegal copying under US copyright law's fair use doctrine.

The warning about market concentration

The point most cited by trade press is the argument that, if AI developers were required to license every piece of text used in training, only corporations with deep enough pockets could keep developing frontier AI technology. In practice, the US government is saying that requiring broad licensing would create an oligopoly of a few companies rich enough to pay for it, an argument that favors OpenAI and Microsoft in the lawsuit brought by the New York Times.

The federal government's first formal position on AI copyright disputes

This is the first time the US federal government has taken a formal position in any of the several lawsuits filed by authors, publishers, record labels and news organizations against AI companies over the use of protected content in model training. Because it is a statement of interest rather than a party to the case, the filing carries no binding weight over Judge Stein's ruling, but this kind of document typically carries meaningful political and legal weight in cases involving broad public interest.

The New York Times' reaction

The paper reacted sharply to the filing. According to Deadline, the New York Times publicly criticized the Trump administration's Justice Department for siding with tech companies in a case that has been running since December 2023 and could become a central precedent for the entire generative AI industry in the United States.

Why it matters for Brazilian agencies and SMBs

Every generative AI tool used today by Brazilian marketing and customer service agencies, from writing assistants to image generators, depends on models trained on massive volumes of text and images collected from the internet. How this US dispute is resolved helps determine whether the cost of accessing those models keeps falling under fierce competition, or rises because of licensing requirements that American courts may or may not validate. It is worth tracking the case in front of Judge Stein: a loss for OpenAI and Microsoft could show up months later as a price change or an availability change for the AI tools used daily in Brazilian operations. My read is that the market concentration argument will likely carry more weight in the court of public opinion than on the legal merits, but that is exactly the kind of argument that tends to shape public policy once the ruling comes down.

Sources

Washington Post, DOJ urges judge to rule for OpenAI, Microsoft in N.Y. Times lawsuit: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/09/02/doj-urges-judge-rule-openai-microsoft-ny-times-lawsuit/ | Bloomberg Law, Trump Administration Backs OpenAI in NY Times Copyright Suit: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/trump-administration-backs-openai-in-ny-times-copyright-suit | Deadline, NY Times Rips Trump's DOJ For Backing AI Companies In Class Action Suit: https://deadline.com/2026/09/new-york-times-justice-department-openai-1237066310/