--- title: "OpenAI Says It’s “Over” If It Can’t Steal All Your Copyrighted Work" description: "OpenAI is raising the specter of China and suggesting the US will lose the AI race if it's unable to scrape copyrighted materials. As Ars Technica reports," date: "2025-03-16" modified: "2025-03-16" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/openai-over-copyrighted-work" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "OpenAI" tags: - "ai copyright" - "china" - "donald trump" - "OpenAI" --- # OpenAI Says It’s “Over” If It Can’t Steal All Your Copyrighted Work ![OpenAI is raising the specter of China and predicting the US will lose the AI race if it's unable to scrape copyrighted materials.]() *\Image: Sebastian Gollnow / picture alliance via Getty / Futurism\* OpenAI says the US will lose the AI race if it's unable to scrape copyrighted materials — and its favorite bogeyman, China, will take the crown instead. As [*Ars Technica* reports](), the Sam Altman-led company is begging president Donald Trump to instate federal regulations defining "fair use," the thorny standard at the heart of the copyright lawsuits lobbed against OpenAI by [*The New York Times*]() and [other companies](). This [policy proposal]() to the White House's Office of Science and Technology comes amid increasing momentum on the state level to regulate AI. In the lengthy document the president [probably will not read himself](), OpenAI said that it could not compete with China — which the company insists on calling the People's Republic of China, or PRC for short, throughout — if regulations stymie AI access to copyrighted works for training data. "If the PRC's developers have unfettered access to data and American companies are left without fair use access, the race for AI is effectively over," the company wrote in its policy proposal. "America loses, as does the success of democratic AI." Though OpenAI insists that using copyrighted materials will help it "ensure more access to more powerful innovations that deliver even more knowledge," publishers chagrined at their work being fed into AI training data disagree — especially when those models spit out [straight-up plagiarized outputs](). In the same statement, the AI giant twisted the long-established "[fair use doctrine]()," a legal framework allowing [limited access to copyrighted materials]() without prior permission for quotations in articles and other normal, non-infringing usages. OpenAI also suggested that somehow, being unable to scrape copyrighted works is a matter of "national security." "Applying the fair use doctrine to AI is not only a matter of American competitiveness — it's a matter of national security," the company insisted in its proposal. "The rapid advances seen with the PRC's DeepSeek, among other recent developments, show that America's lead on frontier AI is far from guaranteed." Ironically, OpenAI has, as *Ars* notes, accused DeepSeek of [improperly using its data]() without permission — a point the company failed to bring up in its policy proposal, probably because it feels embarrassingly hypocritical. "The federal government can both secure Americans' freedom to learn from AI, and avoid forfeiting our AI lead to the PRC by preserving American AI models' ability to learn from copyrighted material," OpenAI insisted. As of now, it's unclear whether Trump will fall for OpenAI's gambit. If Altman and his ilk [butter him up]() enough, however, there's a good chance he might side with them — at the expense of copyright holders the world around. **More on OpenAI:** [*ChatGPT and Other Chatbots Are Hurting Publishers Even Worse Than We Thought*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()