Publishers, Hollywood unions and a Cate Blanchett-led coalition file briefs against fair use in the NYT case against OpenAI

A wave of friend-of-the-court briefs landed on October 29 and 30 in the consolidated copyright litigation against OpenAI and Microsoft, which includes The New York Times' suit and is before Judge Sidney Stein in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Editor & Publisher reports the cases are in the summary judgment phase. The briefs filed this week back the Times and the other plaintiffs and ask the court not to adopt a blanket fair use rule for AI training.

Who filed and what they argue

The News/Media Alliance filed on October 30, joined by the National Newspaper Association, the National Press Photographers Association and ProPublica, per Editor & Publisher. The brief argues that OpenAI's and Microsoft's uses are substitutive rather than transformative, that a fair use finding would undercut "a well-established and rapidly growing derivative market for the licensing of news content," and cites research that ChatGPT sends 96% less referral traffic to publishers than Google search. "This case is existential for the news media industry," said Danielle Coffey, the alliance's president and chief executive.

SAG-AFTRA, the Writers Guilds of America East and West and the American Federation of Musicians filed a 34-page joint brief on Thursday, Deadline reports. It warns that a categorical exemption would shift substantial value from creators to large AI companies, and argues the matter is "no more than an ordinary copyright case." The unions also say AI provisions they negotiated in 2026 "presuppose that training on covered work is a use that can be licensed."

On Friday, the Human Consent Foundation, Cate Blanchett's nonprofit, filed a 31-page brief co-signed by CAA, the Music Artists Coalition, the National Association of Voice Actors and the Creators Coalition on Artificial Intelligence, TheWrap reports. It disputes the defendants' argument that licensing creative works for training is too costly, pointing to collective licensing bodies such as BMI. OpenAI and Microsoft did not respond to TheWrap's requests for comment.

Why it matters

Amicus briefs do not decide anything, but they show the court how large the licensing market has become, and that market is the crux of the fair use fight. A ruling against OpenAI could raise what model providers pay for training data, and those costs tend to reach customers through pricing. If your contracts with AI vendors include copyright indemnities, check what they cover and whether they apply to outputs as well as training.