The New York Times, Seattle Times, and Newsday are part of a coalition of publishers suing OpenAI and Microsoft for using their copyrighted articles to train language models without authorization or compensation. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a brief in September supporting OpenAI, arguing that LLM training on copyrighted content constitutes fair use and serves the public interest in the AI race. The publishers contest this position, calling it a policy statement rather than legal analysis, and asked Judge Sidney H. Stein of New York to assign it minimal influence. The judge’s ruling, overseeing multidistrict proceedings consolidating several generative AI training disputes, could set binding precedent on how copyright law applies to machine learning. No settlements had been reached as of late September 2026 in any of the consolidated cases.
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