Microsoft exec called AI scraping 'largest theft of labor in human history' as court docs expose concerns
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Microsoft exec called AI scraping the "largest theft of labor in human history
For years, Microsoft and OpenAI have fought to keep certain information out of the public eye in their fight with news organizations that have accused the AI firms of teaming up to violate copyright laws by stealing tons of news content to train AI. However, now the details that should never have
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Microsoft exec called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history,' new unredacted filings reveal
New unredacted information in the copyright lawsuit The New York Times brought against OpenAI and Microsoft three years ago reveals an admission that AI scraping was tantamount to theft, and that AI products pose a major threat to publications. Per the lawsuit, a top Microsoft executive privately
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AI Firms Knew Chatbots Were an 'Existential Threat' to Journalists, Court Docs Show - CNET
Jon is a managing editor for CNET's news and AI coverage.... Read full bio AI companies used vast troves of published text to train their large language models, and executives at those firms were aware that doing so constituted a theft of copyrighted materials, according to comments cited by news
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Why the DOJ's OpenAI copyright stance is the real threat to national security - ZDNET
* The government is backing OpenAI in major AI lawsuits. * Ziff Davis (ZDNET's owner) says creators deserve licensing payments. * AI needs human content, but may be destroying it. Ever since generative AI arrived in early 2023, we've seen that its almost unlimited base of knowledge is due to how
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Microsoft director called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history,' while OpenAI head brands ChatGPT an 'existential threat' to publishers -- revelations come from legal briefs filed in NYT lawsuit
The NYT argues that OpenAI and Microsoft infringed upon its copyright over thousands of news articles. The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement in late 2023, with the case apparently still ongoing almost three years later. Now, the publication's legal team has asked
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Trump Tirade Makes It Clear: Publishers Are on Their Own in the AI Fight
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman with President Trump at the G7 summit (Credit: Ludovic MARIN / AFP via Getty Images) As AI companies grapple with how to securely scale their models without alienating a public that's grown weary of data center creep, job loss, and the overall flattening of language,
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Publishers Argue AI Firms Should Pay for Content as Copyright Case Advances - CNET
Jon is a managing editor for CNET's news and AI coverage.... Read full bio A host of copyright infringement lawsuits filed by news organizations against the ChatGPT developer OpenAI are heading toward a new phase, and the Trump administration's intervention is raising the question of just how
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OpenAI staff knew the 'existential threat' AI posed to publishers, New York Times claims
OpenAI copied millions of copyrighted articles in an effort to build technology potentially worth "gazillions", despite recognising the "existential threat" it posed to publishers, according to a new filing in a lawsuit brought by The New York Times. The newspaper and other media outlets are
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OpenAI, Microsoft executives' quotes on AI training threaten copyright defense, news outlets argue
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Microsoft executive called OpenAI's web scraping the 'largest theft of labor in human history' - Engadget
Executives from OpenAI and Microsoft were reportedly worried about ChatGPT training that scraped millions of news articles, The New York Times reported. Microsoft's director of Applied Science, Dr. Brent Hecht, said OpenAI's work was akin to the "largest theft of labor in human history" that could
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Microsoft exec says AI training might be the "largest labor theft in human history"
Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. In brief: Aside from concerns about human extinction or a massive financial bubble, one of generative AI's biggest controversies is how tech giants train their models. While OpenAI and Microsoft
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Inside Microsoft and OpenAI, Worry About Damaging the Publishing Industry
Sign up for the On Tech newsletter. Get our best tech reporting from the week. Get it sent to your inbox. Newly unsealed court documents showed considerable concern within Microsoft and its close partner OpenAI over the use of millions of news articles to develop artificial intelligence
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'The largest theft of labor in human history'
Microsoft's Director of Applied Science called AI training perhaps the "largest theft of labor in human history", in documents unsealed on Thursday. Another Microsoft file calls the result a "doom loop". Its own data shows Copilot cut news click-throughs by up to 94%. A 92-page brief unsealed on
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Microsoft exec called AI the 'largest theft of labor' in history, court records show
A Microsoft executive called the training of artificial intelligence models the "largest theft of labor in human history," according to legal brief filed by the New York Times and unsealed Thursday. In another instance, according to the brief, that same executive called it "an astonishing theft of
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Microsoft exec said AI scraping was 'the largest theft of labor in human history,' lawsuit filings reveal
* Microsoft exec describes AI scraping as "astonishing theft" of labor * Copilot reportedly reduced NYT click-throughs by 93% compared with Bing * Trump administration supports scraping so that the US can retain its AI dominance In an earlier January 2023 memo uncovered in recently unredacted
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Media execs sound alarm on AI
Why it matters: News publishers recognize that they need to embrace AI to survive the transition to an agentic web, but they refuse to broker deals with companies they feel are illegally scraping their content. What they're saying: Speaking onstage to Status founder Oliver Darcy last Wednesday,
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Microsoft Director Admitted in Internal Document That AI Is Creating a "Doom Loop" That Destroys the News Media by Stealing Its Content Without Providing Anything in Return, in Turn Making the AI Useless
More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Are unchecked AI companies destroying the news and the broader media ecosystem? We could harp on about why this is the case, but why not
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Microsoft Staff Asked If AI Scraping Was 'Largest Theft of Labor in Human History'
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified that anything paywalled should be licensed by whoever wants to use it. Microsoft employees discussed whether OpenAI's use of news articles amounted to "the largest theft of labor in human history," and could set off a "doom loop" that degraded the models they
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'The largest theft of labor in human history:' Court docs reveal Microsoft exec predicted AI 'doom loops' could hollow out the internet
Copilot's answer engine allegedly caused the New York Times' click-through rate to plummet by figures up to 93%. In Dec. 2023, The New York Times filed one of the biggest copyright lawsuits in recent memory against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that its AI models heisted ludicrous amounts of
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Microsoft Director Privately Admitted AI Was the "Largest Theft of Labor in Human History," Unsealed Court Documents Show
More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. The threat of perjury has a funny way of forcing people to say the quiet parts out loud. As a recently unsealed and unredacted motion in
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Microsoft and OpenAI workers worry about 'largest theft of labor' in history, records show
Newly unsealed court documents showed considerable concern within Microsoft and its close partner OpenAI over the use of millions of news articles to develop artificial intelligence systems. As OpenAI was forging ahead with its work, Microsoft employees debated whether what OpenAI was doing
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Tech giants secretly fret over 'largest theft of labour' in history
New York | A Microsoft executive called the training of AI models the "largest theft of labour in human history," according to a legal brief filed by the New York Times and unsealed on Thursday (Friday AEST). In another instance, according to the brief, that same executive called it "an astonishing
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Internal Microsoft warning brands AI scraping the 'largest theft of labor in human history'
A Microsoft executive described large-scale scraping for AI training as potentially the "largest theft of labor in human history," according to newly unsealed court documents in the copyright battle between Microsoft, OpenAI and major news publishers. These internal documents revealed
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OpenAI: OpenAI, Microsoft executives' quotes on AI training threaten copyright defense, news outlets argue
OpenAI and its largest financial backer, Microsoft, have argued in the Manhattan federal court case that their AI training on millions of newspaper articles is protected as fair use because it transforms copyrighted material into new content and does not compete with or replace the news
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Did OpenAI Pull Off the Biggest IP Heist of All-Time?
VCR recordings. Book digitization. The use of existing code to build a new operating system. The legality of some of the most consequential technology and products in the last century have come down to a singular question: Are they protected under fair use, the legal doctrine allowing the use of
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Microsoft, OpenAI workers privately worried their work is 'largest theft of labor in human history'
Microsoft and OpenAI workers privately shared concerns that their use of millions of news articles to develop AI bots could represent the "largest theft of labor in human history," according to newly unsealed court docs. One internal Microsoft document from 2023 warned that millions of people
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Staffers at tech giants knew AI tools posed 'existential threat' to news publishers: court docs
High-level staffers at a pair of top tech companies knew that scraping online news content to bolster their AI models could have devastating impacts on publishers - but that didn't stop them, according to a bombshell legal filing. One OpenAI executive even warned that the shady tactic, in which
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Microsoft filings surface: internal warning on chatbot news scraping
Newly unsealed filings in the copyright lawsuit led by The New York Times against Microsoft and OpenAI show that people inside both companies did discuss the risk that using news content to build chatbots could hurt publishers. The filings quote Microsoft researcher Brent Hecht calling mass
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OpenAI and Microsoft feared AI may hurt news publishers, court documents reveal
Microsoft says employee comments do not represent its legal position. OpenAI and Microsoft have been worried about how their new technology can harm the news organisations. Court papers that were made public this week have exposed conversations behind the doors between the senior management of the
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Newly unsealed court documents in The New York Times copyright lawsuit reveal damaging internal communications from Microsoft and OpenAI executives. Microsoft's Director of Applied Science called AI scraping an astonishing theft while OpenAI's ChatGPT head warned of an existential threat to publishers as click-through rates plummeted by up to 93%.
Microsoft executive labeled AI scraping unprecedented theft
Unredacted court documents from the copyright lawsuit filed by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft have exposed explosive internal communications that undermine the companies' fair use defense
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. Microsoft Director of Applied Science Brent Hecht described AI scraping in a January 2023 internal memo as "an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions" and potentially the "largest theft of labor in human history"2
. In another document, Hecht stated that the plan to widely scrape news content made "a complete mockery of the idea of 'fair use'"1
. These revelations came from a motion for summary judgment unsealed Thursday, which news plaintiffs led by The New York Times argue demonstrates exactly how OpenAI and Microsoft viewed the threat to journalism before launching AI products like ChatGPT and Copilot1
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Source: Futurism
OpenAI leadership warned of existential threat to publishers
Internal communications from OpenAI reveal that company executives were acutely aware of the damage their AI training practices would inflict on news organizations. ChatGPT head Nick Turley wrote that publishers would face an "existential threat" from commercial products trained on news content that could substitute news providers
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. Turley described chatbots as "largely substitutive, period" and predicted they "will get more and more substitutive as they get better"2
. An OpenAI software engineer acknowledged in internal messages that "no matter how prominently we show the links, users won't click"1
. OpenAI President Greg Brockman even responded "ah nice" when informed by staffer Nick Ryder about "a hack" to get around The New York Times paywall3
.Click-through rates plummeted by up to 93 percent
Microsoft's own data demonstrates the devastating impact of AI products on news organizations. The company recorded 83-93 percent drops in click-through rates for some news plaintiffs, with other publishers experiencing declines between 51-94 percent
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. Specifically, Microsoft data shows its Copilot "answer engine" caused click-through rates for The New York Times domain to drop as much as 93 percent compared to traditional Bing search2
. A Microsoft document described this phenomenon as a "doom loop" that would "hurt the performance of our models and the entire web at the same time"5
. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified under oath that chatbots substitute for news sites by "giving you the information right there on the website on the AI platform versus needing to go to the underlying source"3
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Source: TweakTown
Massive scale of content scraping revealed
The unredacted court documents expose the sheer volume of copyrighted material used in AI training practices. OpenAI's mid-training datasets alone contain more than 91,692 copies of works published by The New York Times, Daily News, and Center for Investigative Reporting
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. A Common Crawl-derived dataset included more than 2 million documents from nytimes.com alone2
. The filing reveals that "OpenAI delivered the entire GPT-3 training dataset to Microsoft, which Microsoft used to evaluate how to implement OpenAI's models within its own commercial products"2
. Microsoft similarly provided training data to OpenAI through initiatives called Project Taxi and Project Mango, with Project Mango containing copies of at least 160,903 unique works from news publishers2
.Fair use defense faces mounting challenges
The revelations in these unredacted court documents directly contradict the fair use defense that OpenAI and Microsoft have mounted in the copyright infringement lawsuit. Microsoft's own documents acknowledge that "almost no one intended for content they created to be used in this fashion, nor are they compensated for its use"
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. A Microsoft document stated there is a "real risk" that generative AI could "significantly disrupt the employment of the very people who generated the data on which the foundation model was trained"2
. News organizations argue they have "compelling evidence of substitution" and believe that proving chatbots are replacing them in their own markets while serving excerpts of articles verbatim will eviscerate the fair use arguments1
. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified that "anything that is paywalled should be licensed by anyone who wants to use it...for grounding or training" and stated he would have required OpenAI "to retrain its models" if aware they had scraped paywalled content5
.Related Stories
Government intervention complicates copyright landscape
The Department of Justice filed a Statement of Interest on September 1, 2026, weighing in on the copyright lawsuit despite not being a party to the case
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. The DOJ position supports OpenAI and Microsoft, arguing that AI training should be classified as fair use because it is "exceedingly transformative"4
. The government claims that limiting AI training could hinder US AI development and raise barriers to entry for AI companies to produce large language models4
. However, this stance conflicts with the experiences of publishers and content creators. Ziff Davis CEO Vivek Shah published commentary arguing that creators deserve licensing payments for their intellectual property4
. The copyright lawsuit originally filed by The New York Times in late 2023 remains ongoing nearly three years later, with multiple publishers and authors including the Chicago Tribune, The Sun-Sentinel Company, George RR Martin, Michael Chabon, and Sarah Silverman joining related cases4
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Source: TechRadar
Economic foundations of journalism under threat
One Microsoft document warned that "it is highly unusual that an end-product threatens the economic foundations of its essential suppliers, but that is the situation we have created for our LLM business with respect to its 'content supply chain'"
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. News organizations argue that "the future not just of journalism but of responsible AI too depends on preserving incentives for humans to produce the creative works on which a healthy society depends"1
. The declining news revenue threatens to rob chatbots of the abundant streams of reliable information that makes them valuable tools1
. Watch for how courts balance transformative use claims against market harm evidence as this case progresses. The outcome will determine whether AI companies must license content or can continue current AI training practices that bypass paywalls and compensation mechanisms. This decision will shape the economic viability of journalism and content creation in an AI-dominated information landscape.References
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