AI training is fair use, Wired cofounder Kevin Kelly argues in OpenAI copyright case

Wired founding executive editor Kevin Kelly has backed OpenAI and other defendants in a US copyright battle, arguing that using copyrighted books to train AI models qualifies as fair use and helps advance the creativity copyright law is intended to encourage. In a proposed friend-of-the-court brief dated October 16, submitted as an exhibit in the consolidated OpenAI copyright litigation in the Southern District of New York, Kelly urged the court to rule in the defendants’ favour on the training issue. Kelly, himself an author of fiction and nonfiction, argues that training large language models creates a new technological tool rather than a substitute for the books used to develop it.