Trump fires Copyright Office director after report raises questions about AI training

President Donald Trump has fired Shira Perlmutter, who leads the U.S. Copyright Office. The firing was reported by CBS News and Politico, and seemingly confirmed by a statement from Representative Joe Morelle, the top Democrat on the Committee for House Administration. “Donald Trump’s termination of Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, is a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis,” Morelle said. “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 took over the Copyright Office in 2020, during the first Trump administration. She was appointed by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, who Trump also fired this week. Trump alluded to the news on his social network Truth Social, when he “ReTruthed” a post from attorney Mike Davis linking to the CBS News article. (Confusingly, Davis seemed to criticize the firing, writing, “Now tech bros are going to ... Read full article.