Microsoft Executive Describes AI Scraping as 'The Largest Theft of Labor in Human History' in Unredacted Legal Filings
Newly unsealed legal documents from The New York Times’ copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft reveal internal admissions that the companies considered AI scraping to be a form of theft. A top Microsoft executive reportedly described these practices as “the largest theft of labor in human history,” while OpenAI leadership acknowledged its models posed an existential threat to publishers like The Times. The documents detail how both firms allegedly bypassed paywalls and mass-scraped content, stripping copyright notices from training data. These revelations challenge the companies’ fair use defense by suggesting that AI products are not only substituting for original works but also harming their market value. Microsoft’s internal analysis showed its Copilot feature caused a 93% drop in click-through rates to The New York Times compared to traditional Bing search, raising concerns about economic harm. The case centers on whether training generative AI models using copyrighted content violates copyright law or qualifies as fair use. While courts have generally favored AI companies’ arguments that such training is transformative and non-substitutive, these new admissions complicate those claims by highlighting direct competition with original sources.
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Topics: AI copyright law legal dispute Microsoft OpenAI The New York Times