TRAIN Act

Copyright owners can subpoena AI developers

This bill would let a copyright owner or an authorized person ask a U.S. district court clerk to issue a subpoena to an AI developer. The request must include a proposed subpoena and a sworn statement that the requester in good faith believes the developer used the requester’s copyrighted works to train a generative AI model. If the papers are in proper form, the clerk would have to issue the subpoena quickly and the developer would have to expeditiously disclose copies or records that identify the requester’s training works. Subpoenas would be limited to works the requester owns or controls, recipients could not re‑disclose the records without permission, and failing to comply would create a rebuttable presumption that the developer copied the work. Courts could sanction owners who request subpoenas in bad faith, applying Rule 11(c). The bill would also define key terms, for example excluding noncommercial end users from the “developer” definition, covering model updates and retraining, and defining “training material” to include text, images, audio, and annotations.