• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, May 11, 2025

The U.S. Copyright Office has fallen short on at least a few counts in its latest report on generative AI training of models by AI companies. 

(In a bizarre twist, the White House fired Shira Perlmutter, the head of the Copyright Office, on Saturday, reports state. It is not clear that this had anything to do with the report, or if it is simply a matter of reducing head count.)

In any case, the pre-publication release  of Copyright and Artificial Intelligence “states clearly what we already knew: U.S. copyright law is capable of handling new technology, the primary issue we continue to face is effective enforcement and AI developers’ respect for the law,” says Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance.

However, the Alliance “would have preferred the Copyright Office had issued a stronger conclusion on training of news media content,” Coffey continues. in a statement released late on Friday.

But the report makes “a compelling case that AI companies must rein in their excesses, respect content creators, and fall in line with copyright law,” Coffey adds. 

In addition, there are special risks to news media presented by retrieval augmented generation (RAG). 

However, the Office “declined to make definitive statements on the transformative use defense deployed by many AI companies, noting that models may simultaneously serve transformative and non-transformative purposes,” the Alliance states. 

The News Media Alliance argues that “most AI models do not consistently employ sufficient guardrails or mitigations against competitive uses for professional content, and we wish the Office had come to a broader conclusion here to incentivize more responsible development.” 

What can the news industry do to protect itself?

The report, the third in a series, acknowledges, “Dozens of lawsuits are pending in the United States, focusing on the application of copyright’s fair use doctrine. Legislators around the world have proposed or enacted laws regarding the use of copyrighted works in AI training, whether to remove barriers or impose restrictions. 

However, the Office does not recommend legislation in the U.S., which may be a mistake.

“Given the robust growth of voluntary licensing, as well as the lack of stakeholder support for any statutory change, the Office believes government intervention would be premature at this time,” it states. 

The report concludes, “Rather, licensing markets should continue to develop, extending early successes into more contexts as soon as possible. In those areas where remaining gaps are unlikely to be filled, alternative approaches such as extended collective licensing should be considered to address any market failure.”