Fair use benefits everyone
A coalition of experts and organizations defends fair use in AI training, arguing it drives innovation and benefits diverse fields, while criticizing a lawsuit seeking to undermine this legal principle.
A broad coalition of authors, journalists, academics, and legal experts has publicly supported the principle of fair use in AI training, emphasizing its role in fostering innovation and societal benefits. They argue that fair use has historically enabled medical breakthroughs, new technologies, and advancements benefiting countless individuals, including those in media professions. The coalition includes groups like the American Council of the Blind and the Association of Research Libraries, who highlight fair use’s importance across sectors such as education, healthcare, and agriculture.
The New York Times’ lawsuit challenges decades of legal precedent by seeking to discard fair use, which the coalition describes as a foundational principle for progress. They contend the lawsuit ignores the transformative impact of AI training on innovation and public benefit, instead prioritizing a narrow financial claim. Legal briefs submitted by these groups emphasize that fair use enables learning, discovery, and creation without stifling the development of tools that rely on broad knowledge sources.
Fair use has long protected transformative technologies, such as image search and full-text book search, as well as accessible digital resources for people with disabilities. The coalition cites legal precedents, including cases like *Authors Guild v. Google* and *HathiTrust*, to argue that fair use ensures public access to knowledge rather than concentrating benefits among a privileged few. They assert that AI’s benefits should similarly be widely accessible, not restricted by legal barriers.
OpenAI argues that its use of newspaper articles to train AI models did not undermine the commercial expectations of publishers. The company states that publishers retain exclusive rights to sell access to their articles and that their ability to monetize content remains unaffected by AI training. OpenAI emphasizes that fair use supports innovation without harming the market for original works, aligning with legal precedents that protect transformative uses of copyrighted material.