Microsoft Executive Called AI Data Scraping 'The Largest Theft Of Labor In Human History'
The filings put internal Microsoft and OpenAI statements about scraping and paywall evasion on the record in a case where courts have so far leaned toward the AI companies' fair use defense, and the Trump administration has backed that defense.
Reporting from 1 source: GIGAZINE.
Newly released unredacted filings in The New York Times' copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft show a Microsoft executive described AI data scraping as 'the largest theft of labor in human history.' The filings also say OpenAI management framed its models as an 'existential threat' to publishers and journalists whose content was used for training, and that paywalls were evaded in undetectable ways.
The filings describe methods behind the training data itself: paywalls evaded in undetectable ways, datasets built through large-scale scraping, and copyright notices deliberately stripped from training data. Microsoft's own internal figures show its Copilot answer engine cut click-through rates to The New York Times' domain by as much as 93% compared to Bing. Brent Hecht, Microsoft's Director of Applied Science, called the situation a 'doom loop' in a January 2024 internal presentation, and Microsoft itself wrote that the LLM 'content supply chain' has put a finished product in conflict with a supplier it depends on.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.