OpenAI calls for US government to codify ‘fair use’ for AI training

In Brief

In a proposal for the U.S. government’s “AI Action Plan,” the Trump Administration’s initiative to reshape American AI policy, OpenAI called for a U.S. copyright strategy that “[preserves] American AI models’ ability to learn from copyrighted material.”

“America has so many AI startups, attracts so much investment, and has made so many research breakthroughs largely

because the fair use doctrine promotes AI development,” OpenAI wrote.

It’s not the first time OpenAI, which has trained many of its models on openly available web data, often without the data owners’ knowledge or consent, has argued for more permissive laws and regulations around AI training.

Last year, OpenAI said in a submission to the U.K.’s House of Lords that limiting AI training to public domain content “might yield an interesting experiment, but would not provide AI systems that meet the needs of today’s citizens.”

The content owners who’ve sued OpenAI for copyright infringement will no doubt take issue with the company’s latest reassertion of this stance.

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