‘Progressive’ Tech Group Asks Trump to Block AI Copyright Cases; The American Prospect, October 31, 2025

DAVID DAYEN, The American Prospect; ‘Progressive’ Tech Group Asks Trump to Block AI Copyright Cases

"The Chamber of Progress, a self-styled “progressive” industry trade group supported by most of the biggest tech platforms, has urged the Trump administration to intervene in a litany of copyright cases involving artificial intelligence firms, to try to stop authors and publishers from having their work used for training AI models without permission.

The pleading comes as Anthropic prepares to pay authors $1.5 billion, the largest award in the history of copyright law, for pirating their work, in a settlement announced last month. OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Meta are named defendants in the more than 50 active lawsuits over AI intellectual-property theft.

In a letter to Michael Kratsios, the lead science adviser to President Trump, the Chamber of Progress estimates that AI companies could be liable under the Copyright Act for up to $1.5 trillion for stealing copyrighted work on which to train their models. The letter’s authors claim that this represents “an existential risk” to AI companies, and that the cases should be tossed out under a “fair use” standard.

The Chamber of Progress’s campaign to promote fair use, which they have created a campaign around called “Generate and Create,” comes as at least three of the nonprofit organization’s past or current backers are being sued over copyright claims: Meta, Google, and the AI art generator Midjourney. Another current funder, Nvidia, relies heavily on AI development for its continued success, and venture capital firm a16z, with several AI startups in its portfolio, also funds the nonprofit."