Court filings say Microsoft exec called AI scraping “theft”

In short: Newly unsealed court filings in The New York Times lawsuit describe internal Microsoft and OpenAI comments that frame AI data scraping as “theft” and a threat to publishers.

What happened

The New York Times has a long-running copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft over whether their AI systems were trained on Times content without permission. Newly unsealed parts of court filings include quotes that the Times says come from internal emails, memos, and presentations.

In the filings, a top Microsoft executive privately described the AI training approach as “the largest theft of labor in human history.” The documents also describe alleged methods for collecting content, including scraping (automatically copying lots of web pages, like using a vacuum to pull in text) and bypassing paywalls without being noticed.

The filings also point to internal concerns about harm to news businesses. One example cited is Microsoft data that allegedly showed Bing Copilot, an “answer engine” that replies directly, reducing clicks to The New York Times website by as much as 93% compared to traditional search.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, according to the article, testified that content behind paywalls should be licensed if it is used for “training” or “grounding” (using source material to improve answers). The filings also say OpenAI leaders warned internally that chatbots could become a substitute for visiting publishers’ sites.

Why it matters

This case is part of a bigger fight about who gets paid when AI tools learn from books, articles, and other copyrighted work. If people get answers from a chatbot instead of a news site, publishers can lose traffic and subscription sales, which can make it harder to fund reporting.

Source: TechCrunch AI