Top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee said on Friday that the Justice Department had overstepped its authority and made a flawed legal argument in its support of OpenAI in a landmark copyright lawsuit brought by The New York Times and other publishers.
In a filing in federal court in Manhattan, the lawmakers also signaled that if the Democrats retook the House in elections on Tuesday, the chamber was likely to shift away from its largely hands-off approach to artificial intelligence companies.
In early September, the Justice Department argued in a court filing that using articles from The Times and other written works to train A.I. systems sufficiently transformed them into new material, which copyright law allows. And it made a broader case that developing A.I. was critical to national security and outweighed potential harms.
But the Democrats said that when Congress passed the copyright law in 1976, it did not include an exception for national security or give the Justice Department authority to assert specific or broad national security exceptions.
The three lawmakers — Representatives Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Hank Johnson of Georgia — called the Justice Department’s argument “a bulldozer that would eliminate copyright protection with respect to A.I. training for all works in all circumstances.”
The Justice Department declined to comment beyond its filing last month.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Microsoft, OpenAI’s partner and co-defendant in The Times’s lawsuit, declined comment.
In late 2023, The Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for using its works to develop ChatGPT and related A.I. systems, and other news publishers also filed cases that are now consolidated in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The news publishers have argued that the tech companies violated copyright protection by taking their articles and using them without permission or compensation. The tech companies have argued that their actions were allowed under “fair use” protections built into copyright law.
Judge Sidney H. Stein is considering motions for a summary judgment that would head off a trial, and Friday is the deadline for outside parties to file amicus briefs in the case.
Law professors, trade groups and nonprofit organizations have already submitted a number of briefs, which is typical in closely watched cases. But the filing by the Judiciary Democrats is the only one entered so far by current lawmakers.
They said adopting the Justice Department argument would be “financially devastating to the copyright community and the nation.” Times articles are not “mere collections of facts,” they wrote, adding “They reflect the structure, framing and analysis that their authors bring to the facts, which is the kind of creative expression copyright exists to protect.”
Mr. Raskin is the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Nadler a former chair of the committee and Mr. Johnson the top Democrat on the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet.
While Mr. Nadler is retiring, Mr. Raskin and Mr. Johnson will be in a strong position if Democrats take control of the House. After the election, Democrats are expected to put pressure on A.I. companies that were spared regulations during the first two years of the current Trump administration.
House Republicans left Washington for the midterms having considered bills aimed at protecting consumers from utility rate increases for data centners without bringing any broader legislation that would curb A.I. use or deployment.
Democrats would still have a difficult time enacting A.I. or any other tech regulations, which President Trump would be likely to veto. But they could start investigations of the A.I. companies and their interactions with administration officials.
Democrats have sharply criticized donations by OpenAI, Microsoft, Google and Meta to Mr. Trump’s inauguration and projects like his renovation of the White House ballroom as payments that have influenced the president’s antiregulatory stance.
Cecilia Kang contributed reporting from Washington.
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