Gloria LevineSenior EditorGloria LevineSenior EditorPublished12 May 2025TagsShowcase Your Product to Our Creative AudienceLet's TalkTrump fires the director of the organization.The issue of training AI on someone's copyrighted works is as sensitive as ever. After years of contemplation, the US Copyright Office has finally released a statement, saying that using others' content with AI for commercial purposes is "beyond established fair use boundaries.""Various uses of copyrighted works in AI training are likely to be transformative. The extent to which they are fair, however, will depend on what works were used, from what source, for what purpose, and with what controls on the outputs – all of which can affect the market. When a model is deployed for purposes such as analysis or research – the types of uses that are critical to international competitiveness – the outputs are unlikely to substitute for expressive works used in training. But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries."For those unfair uses, the US Copyright Office thinks practical solutions are needed to "support ongoing innovation." However, don't get too excited: the Office believes that "government intervention would be premature at this time" because of the growth of voluntary licensing and the "lack of stakeholder support for any statutory change.""Rather, licensing markets should continue to develop, extending early successes into more contexts as soon as possible. In those areas where remaining gaps are unlikely to be filled, alternative approaches such as extended collective licensing should be considered to address any market failure."Moreover, the organization says that American leadership "would best be furthered by supporting both of these world-class industries that contribute so much to our economic and cultural advancement" by, for example, supporting effective licensing options that "can ensure that innovation continues to advance without undermining intellectual property rights."Interestingly, right after the report, President Donald Trump fired the Office's director, Shira Perlmutter, who has been in charge since 2020."Donald Trump’s termination of Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, is a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis," commented democratic representative Joe Morelle. "It is surely no coincidence he acted less than a day after she refused to rubber-stamp Elon Musk’s efforts to mine troves of copyrighted works to train AI models." Perlmutter was appointed by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, whom Trump also fired last week.Join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.