Microsoft Executive Called AI Scraping Theft, Unredacted NYT Lawsuit Filings Reveal
· Technology · TechCrunch
Newly unredacted court filings in The New York Times's copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft reveal that a top Microsoft executive privately described AI training practices as theft. The material also shows that OpenAI leadership acknowledged its AI models posed an existential threat to publishers and journalists. The filings detail how the tech companies allegedly bypassed paywalls, built training datasets via mass scraping, and deliberately stripped copyright notices. Microsoft's own data indicates its Copilot answer engine caused click-through rates for The New York Times domain to drop by up to 93%. An internal January 2024 presentation by Microsoft Director of Applied Science Brent Hecht described the decline as a doom loop threatening the web's economic foundations.
Why it matters
The unsealed admissions directly challenge AI companies' fair use defenses in major copyright litigation, potentially reshaping how publishers license content for large language models.
Read the original report — TechCrunch
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