Microsoft and OpenAI executives privately acknowledged serious concerns about AI training data practices in newly unsealed court documents from The New York Times' 2023 copyright lawsuit. Microsoft's Brent Hecht called the web scraping the 'largest theft of labor in human history,' while OpenAI's Nick Turley described it as an 'existential threat to publishers,' yet both companies publicly defended their practices as legally consistent with copyright law.
Unsealed documents from a copyright lawsuit reveal that Microsoft and OpenAI executives privately acknowledged serious concerns about scraping news content for AI training. Microsoft's Brent Hecht called it "the largest theft of labor in human history" and warned the practice mocked the concept of fair use, while OpenAI's Nick Turley noted publishers faced an "existential threat" from AI products that could substitute for news providers.