OpenAI published about their very general language-writing & comprehension model (a) today.
Interestingly, they're not releasing the model itself:
Due to concerns about large language models being used to generate deceptive, biased, or abusive language at scale, we are only releasing a much smaller version of GPT-2 along with sampling code. We are not releasing the dataset, training code, or GPT-2 model weights.
Does OpenAI hold a copyright for this model (and its other intellectual property)?
If the US government decided they wanted to requisition this model, would an OpenAI copyright defend against that? Would OpenAI have any real recourse against a government requisition?
That's not how copyright works. US copyright law is civil, not criminal, which means that the US government can't act on infringements of its own initiative. A web site owner could theoretically sue OpenAI claiming that OpenAI infringed their copyright, but they'd probably lose, for a number of reasons.