A US appeals court upholds a ruling for Thomson Reuters in its copyright lawsuit against Ross Intelligence, rejecting Ross' fair use defense for AI training (Blake Brittain/Reuters)

A U.S. appeals court’s decision in favor of Thomson Reuters reinforces that using copyrighted content to train AI systems can carry significant legal and financial risk, weakening the assumption that “fair use” will broadly protect model training. For CIOs and technology leaders, the ruling raises the strategic bar for AI adoption: IT organizations must tighten data provenance controls, reassess vendor AI claims, and ensure training and retrieval practices are covered by licensing and legal review.