President Trump announced that the United States’ stance on intellectual property and AI would be a “commonsense application” that does not force AI companies to pay for each piece of copyrighted material used in training frontier models. “You can’t be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book, or anything else that you’ve read or studied, you’re supposed to pay for,” Trump said. “We appreciate that, but just can’t do it— because it’s not doable.”
The president also doubled down on his anti-woke rhetoric in his speech. “We are getting rid of woke,” he said on Wednesday. “The American people do not want woke Marxist lunacy in the AI models.”
The remarks came during a keynote speech at a summit hosted by the All-In podcast and the Hill & Valley Forum. White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks, one of the podcast’s cohosts, has been instrumental in shaping the Trump administration’s approach to artificial intelligence policy.
Since the AI boom began in 2022, tech companies have been locked in a series of major legal battles with publishers, record labels, media companies, individual artists, and other rights holders over the legality of training their AI tools on copyrighted material without permission or compensation. Earlier this week, US senators Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal introduced a bill that seeks to bar AI companies from training on copyrighted works without permission; Trump’s remarks suggest the White House does not support this approach.
Those who want AI companies to be able to train on copyrighted works without licensing the material are celebrating Trump’s remarks. “He’s absolutely right,” says Adam Eisgrau, a senior director at the Chamber of Progress. “Common sense dictates that requiring gen-AI developers to license the copyrighted works they’re trained on is both not doable and makes little sense, because those works are not plagiarized. They’re used, as a person would, to learn and produce amazing technology that two federal courts have already said is ‘spectacularly transformative.’”
In a wide-ranging AI Action Plan released this morning, the Trump administration outlined over 90 policy recommendations intended to ensure that the United States wins what Sacks calls the “AI race” against China.
The 28-page report stresses that “AI is far too important to smother in bureaucracy at this early stage” and recommends policies meant to loosen regulations and roll back Biden-era guardrails, including a review of Federal Trade Commission investigations “to ensure that they do not advance theories of liability that unduly burden AI innovation.” It also recommends that federal funding be withheld from states that enact overly “burdensome” AI legislation. Curbing state efforts to regulate AI has been one of Sacks’ pet projects. This recommendation comes after an attempt to pass a federal law requiring a decade-long “AI moratorium” on state legislation failed late last month.
In addition to issuing recommendations to loosen regulations, the AI Action Plan also doubles down on the Trump administration’s disdain for “woke” AI. It recommends that federal procurement guidelines be updated so that only AI companies that “ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias” are granted government contracts.
Notably, the AI Action Plan does not mention intellectual property. Trump’s remarks this evening offer unprecedented insight into the White House’s preferred approach to regulating AI and copyright.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.