SAG-AFTRA, writers' and musicians' unions urge judge to reject categorical fair use for AI training in OpenAI case

What happened

On 29 October 2026, four entertainment unions jointly filed a 34-page amicus brief in the consolidated copyright litigation against OpenAI and Microsoft in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (In re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation, No. 1:25-md-03143). The filers are SAG-AFTRA, the American Federation of Musicians, and the Writers Guild of America East and West. Deadline Hollywood reported the filing on 30 October 2026.

What the brief argues

According to the report, the unions ask the court to reject a categorical fair-use exemption for training AI models on copyrighted work, and to decide fair use case by case. The brief argues that the harms of unlicensed training fall not only on the news publishers suing OpenAI but on "the countless professionals behind the work," and that a ruling that training is categorically fair use would allow a "potentially enormous transfer of value" from creators to corporations.

The brief also points to the unions' 2026 bargaining agreements, which won notice-and-bargaining rights when covered work is licensed to third parties to train commercial generative AI systems. It argues those provisions presuppose that training on covered work is a licensable use, and that a categorical fair-use ruling "would render moot the terms the unions and the industry agreed to at the bargaining table." The brief describes the dispute as "no more than an ordinary copyright case" that should be treated as such.

Status

The brief is an argument by non-parties to the case, not a ruling. The court has not decided the fair-use question in this litigation, and summary-judgment briefing on that question is pending. Nothing in the report states that OpenAI or Microsoft has responded to this brief.