Apparently, it is lobbying Trump, saying that China will win the AI race if he does not allow such copyright theft. The fact that making sure AI companies like OpenAI can keep raking in billions without pesky copyright lawsuits getting in the way is just a pleasant side-effect.

The courts, however, aren’t playing along just yet. AI firms are locked in a slugfest with rights holders who argue that training AI on copyrighted works threatens to replace creatives and dilute human ingenuity.

One landmark ruling already went against the machines, with a judge declaring that AI training isn’t fair use after it was found to be directly competing with Thomson-Reuters’ Westlaw. Now OpenAI hopes Trump’s intervention will save its bacon, especially in its high-stakes legal battle with Apple’s favourite newspaper The New York Times.

OpenAI’s official line is that its AI models don’t just copy works but instead extract “patterns, linguistic structures, and contextual insights.” In other words, they’re trying to dress up industrial-scale data scraping as a high-minded creative process.

The outfit has submitted “freedom-focused” policy recommendations to Trump’s AI plan, arguing that if the US doesn’t support AI firms, China will race ahead unimpeded.  For those not in the know, “freedom-focused” is a dog whistle to MAGA, even for things involving things like this, which have nothing to do with freedom.

The message is clear: give us unlimited access to data, or America loses. And if that argument sounds like a thinly veiled threat, that’s because it is.

Not stopping at copyright, OpenAI is also lobbying for sweeping legal protections to shield AI firms from an avalanche of state laws trying to rein in AI excesses.

In 2025, 832 new AI-related laws have been introduced, many inspired by the European Union’s stricter approach. OpenAI, unsurprisingly, wants those laws scrapped in favour of a single federal rulebook—one written with AI firms' best interests in mind.

It has been talking about a “voluntary partnership” with the government, where AI companies share knowledge and model access in exchange for immunity from liability.

But OpenAI’s ambitions don’t stop at the US border. The company wants America to strong-arm other countries into adopting AI-friendly copyright rules. 

"The US should be "shaping international policy discussions around copyright and AI and working to prevent less innovative countries from imposing their legal regimes on American AI firms and slowing our rate of progress," OpenAI said.

In other words, the rest of the world should roll over and let American AI firms feast on their data.