Before Musk departed as chief of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he targeted other watchdogs investigating the privacy and copyright issues presented by generative AI. The US Copyright Office was apparently targeted by Musk in May 2025 over its leadership’s resistance to AI-friendly copyright policy. In July 2024, the agency issued a report calling for Congress to pass a law to regulate deepfakes, with assistance from the US Patent and Trademark Office and the Federal Trade Commission, the nation’s top antitrust agency. (Bipartisan federal legislation cracking down on deepfakes and nonconsensual sharing of intimate images was signed into law in May 2025.)
Trump fired the acting register of copyrights and the agency’s deputy librarian at the beginning of May — a move allegedly supported by Musk and DOGE — though his replacements have historically not been as friendly to Big Tech as Musk may have hoped.
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