Sacks @ 01:00:05Inconclusive
aigovernment
In the coming years, at least one major lawsuit over AI training on copyrighted content (such as YouTube data or song catalogs) will be filed and fully litigated through the US court system, including conflicting rulings at the circuit court level, followed by a US Supreme Court decision on whether such AI training constitutes fair use; after that Supreme Court ruling, the US Congress will pass follow‑on legislation to codify or adjust the legal framework around AI training and copyright.
Well, somebody's going to litigate it. Somebody is going to litigate it...we're going to get some messy arbitration around fair use. And it's probably going to work its way up over the different circuit courts. You'll probably get different judgments. And finally, the Supreme Court will resolve it. and then we'll kind of know where things stand. And then and then there'll be a legislative fix.View on YouTube
Explanation
As of December 1, 2025, the key end‑states in Sacks’s prediction have not happened yet, but the process he described is clearly underway.
What has happened:
- Multiple major lawsuits over AI training on copyrighted content have been filed against AI companies (e.g., Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence; Bartz v. Anthropic; Kadrey v. Meta; New York Times v. OpenAI). (reuters.com)
- U.S. district courts have issued conflicting decisions on fair use in the AI‑training context:
- In Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence (D. Del.), the court held that using Westlaw headnotes to develop an AI legal‑research tool was not fair use and granted summary judgment for Thomson Reuters. (reuters.com)
- In Bartz v. Anthropic (N.D. Cal.) and Kadrey v. Meta (N.D. Cal.), judges held that using lawfully obtained books to train large language models is highly transformative and can qualify as fair use on the records before them, even while distinguishing or condemning uses of pirated copies. (theguardian.com)
These are exactly the kind of “messy” fair‑use fights Sacks foresaw, but they are still at the trial‑court level.
- Appeals are pending (for example, Thomson Reuters v. Ross is now before the Third Circuit as case 25‑2153, and Bartz v. Anthropic has spawned a Rule 23(f) petition and Ninth Circuit amicus briefs), but no U.S. court of appeals has yet issued a definitive generative‑AI‑training fair‑use ruling that creates a clear circuit split. (mishcon.com)
What has not happened yet (and is central to the prediction):
- No U.S. Supreme Court decision has resolved whether training generative‑AI models on copyrighted works is fair use. Current Supreme Court copyright jurisprudence (e.g., Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith in 2023) addresses transformative use generally, not AI training, and recent coverage of the Anthropic ruling explicitly notes that legal experts still expect the Supreme Court may eventually have to address AI training. (en.wikipedia.org)
- No AI‑training‑specific federal copyright statute has been enacted. Bills such as the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act and the bipartisan TRAIN Act have been introduced and referred to committee, but as of late 2025 they have not passed Congress. Other enacted laws (like the TAKE IT DOWN Act and proposed NO FAKES Act) focus on deepfakes and likeness rights, not on whether AI training itself is fair use. (en.wikipedia.org)
Because Sacks’s full sequence—circuit‑level split → Supreme Court fair‑use ruling on AI training → follow‑on act of Congress—has not yet occurred, but the timeline (“in the coming years”) still allows for it and the litigation/legislative machinery is clearly in motion, the prediction cannot yet be judged right or wrong. It is therefore too early to call, i.e., inconclusive rather than clearly correct or clearly false.