Search Engines, AI, And The Long Fight Over Fair Use
Summary
This article argues that training AI models on copyrighted works should be protected as fair use (the legal right to use copyrighted material without permission for certain purposes like research or analysis), just as courts have previously allowed for search engines and other information technologies. The article contends that AI training is transformative because it extracts patterns from works rather than replacing them, and that expanding copyright restrictions on AI training could harm legitimate research practices in science and medicine.
Classification
Affected Vendors
Related Issues
Original source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/search-engines-ai-and-long-fight-over-fair-use
First tracked: February 15, 2026 at 08:49 PM
Classified by LLM (prompt v3) · confidence: 85%