Microsoft exec called AI scraping the “largest theft of labor in human history”

Key Points:

• Internal documents unsealed in a lawsuit led by The New York Times reveal that Microsoft and OpenAI executives internally acknowledged that scraping news content to train AI models like ChatGPT and Copilot constituted a massive theft and posed an existential threat to news organizations.
• Microsoft Director Brent Hecht described the practice as “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions” and criticized the companies’ fair use defense, while OpenAI’s ChatGPT head Nick Turley warned that AI products could substitute and undermine traditional news providers.
• Data shows significant drops in click-through rates to news sites from AI platforms, confirming fears that chatbots are replacing direct news consumption, with insiders admitting users rarely click through to original sources once AI provides summaries or key points.
• News organizations allege Microsoft and OpenAI violated copyright laws by using news content without licensing, including repurposing datasets purchased for search engines and using New York Times articles obtained under restrictive agreements, and accuse the firms of attempting to hide these practices.
• Microsoft defends its AI products as transformative fair use, but news groups argue that the internal evidence proves knowledge of wrongdoing and call for courts to require AI companies to license news content to preserve journalism and responsible AI development.