Washington DC - President Donald Trump's administration has fired Shira Perlmutter, the chief of the US Copyright Office, after she shared a report that challenged the use of copyrighted material by artificial intelligence (AI).

In a statement shared with NBC News, the office claimed Perlmutter was sent an email on Saturday informing her: "your position as the Register of Copyrights and Director at the US Copyright Office is terminated effective immediately."

Perlmutter's firing came only days after the administration terminated Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, who appointed the former to her role in 2020.

It also comes after Perlmutter and her office last week released the third part of a report challenging the idea of tech companies being allowed to use copyrighted material to "train" their AIs.

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Perlmutter's firing quickly garnered heavy criticism. In an X post, Democratic Congressman Joe Morelle of New York described it as "a brazen, unprecedented power grab with no legal basis," and argued the decision may have something to do with tech mogul Elon Musk being one of Trump's top advisors, as he currently owns xAI.

"It's 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," Morelle wrote.

Last month, an X user shared a post that simply stated, "delete all [intellectual property] laws," to which Musk responded, "I agree."