Trump unveils aggressive AI plan focused on deregulation, dismisses copyright payments for AI training

What just happened? President Donald Trump has taken a firm stance on one of the most contentious questions in artificial intelligence: whether companies developing AI should be required to pay for the copyrighted content used to train their systems. Speaking at an AI Summit in Washington, Trump dismissed the idea as unworkable. He argued that requiring AI firms to compensate for every book, article, or piece of media used in training their models would stifle innovation and risk leaving the United States behind global competitors like China.

"You can't be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book, or whatever you've studied you're expected to pay for," Trump said, likening the process to a person reading for knowledge – a practice not subject to royalties or contract negotiations.

Trump's comments come at a time when copyright holders, authors, and content creators are increasingly ...