Hollywood's most powerful talent agencies, entertainment unions and music industry organizations have filed a wave of amicus briefs backing The New York Times in its copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, throwing the creative industry's institutional weight behind the highest-stakes AI case in the country.
The filing blitz, reported by Page Six Hollywood, Axios and other outlets, lands at a decisive moment: the Times moved for summary judgment in September, reply briefs are due Friday, and after that the judge will either rule or send the case toward one of the most closely watched trials of the decade. For readers following AI policy and the latest AI developments, the creative industry's coordinated entry into the case signals that licensing, not litigation-by-attrition, is becoming the organized position of American content industries. For more context on this story, see our ongoing more AI stories.
Who filed, and what they argue
Talent agency WME filed its amicus brief on Friday night, followed by a broad coalition: rival agency CAA, the Human Artistry Campaign — whose supporters include actors Anne Hathaway and singers Madonna and Bette Midler — along with unions SAG-AFTRA, the American Federation of Musicians, and the East and West branches of the Writers Guild of America.
The music industry filed separately and in force. The Recording Industry Association of America, the National Music Publishers' Association, ASCAP and BMI each submitted briefs of their own, arguing that AI companies cannot use copyrighted works for training without permission and must license what they want and pay for it.
The unions framed the stakes in labor terms, emphasizing that the rights and livelihoods of more than 250,000 people working in entertainment and media depend on how the court answers the fair-use question.
WME's argument, as reported by Page Six, goes to the heart of OpenAI's defense: the agency says the company's claim that it deserves "carte blanche" to train on whatever material it wants does not hold legal water. A functioning licensing market already exists, WME notes — OpenAI itself has signed content deals with News Corp and Disney, an admission the agency says undermines any assertion that licensing at scale is impossible.
Where the case stands
The Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023, alleging the companies used millions of its articles without permission to train and power their AI products. In April 2025, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York let the core claims proceed — direct copyright infringement along with contributory and vicarious liability theories — while dismissing some claims tied to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and unfair competition.
The case is now in its summary judgment phase, where the judge decides what a trial is even necessary for. The Times filed its summary judgment motion in September, and the deadline for all reply briefs falls this Friday. According to reporting gathered by international outlets covering the filing wave, the suit will test not only whether the article data was used without authorization, but what liability attaches when AI models output content substantially similar to protected works or strip out copyright and source information.
Not every powerful voice is on the Times' side. The US Department of Justice has backed the AI industry's argument that licensing individual works at the scale of modern training corpora is impractical — a position that puts the government partially at odds with the creative coalition now crowding the docket.
Why Hollywood is spending its capital here
The creative industry's engagement is not incidental. WME has been among the most aggressive AI lobbyists in the entertainment world, pushing the NO FAKES Act — a Senate bill protecting people from unauthorized AI reproductions of their likeness — and publicly opposing OpenAI's Sora video generator. Agency leadership has met with senators and the White House on the issue, according to prior reporting cited by Page Six.
The briefs also carry personal history. WME executive Ari Emanuel has been an open critic of OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, and appeared in court to support Elon Musk during Musk's unsuccessful lawsuit against the company earlier this year. But the filings' logic rests on broader industry interest: the fair-use ruling OpenAI seeks would apply to every studio, label, publisher and performer whose work sits in a training corpus.
What a ruling could mean
If the court rejects OpenAI's fair-use defense at the summary judgment stage, the immediate consequence is a trial on whether the specific copying was infringing — and leverage that would ripple through every pending AI copyright case in the country. A ruling for the Times would strengthen the position that training on copyrighted text without a license is infringement, accelerating the licensing market that companies like News Corp and Disney have already embraced.
If OpenAI prevails, the practical effect would be to lower the cost of building foundation models dramatically — and to shift the fight from courtrooms to Congress, where the NO FAKES Act and similar measures are pending.
Either way, the creative industry has made its position unmistakable before a single word of the ruling is written: permission and compensation, or nothing. Friday's reply-brief deadline is the next marker in a case that will define the economics of AI training data for years.
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