Microsoft director called AI scraping ‘the largest theft of labor in human history,’ while OpenAI head brands ChatGPT an ‘existential threat’ to publishers — revelations come from legal briefs filed in NYT lawsuit

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement in late 2023, with the case apparently still ongoing almost three years later. Now, the publication’s legal team has asked the court for a summary judgment after it filed a revealing legal brief based on statements and documents from the defendants. According to 404 Media, these documents remain sealed or redacted at the request of both companies, with the revelations showing potentially damaging statements from their leadership, including claims AI scraping is the biggest theft of labor in human history and an existential threat to publishers.

The brief cited an internal memo dated January 2023 by Microsoft director of Applied Science Brent Hecht, where he allegedly said, “Millions of people around the world will soon consider large models ‘hoovering up’ all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions” and also called it “the largest theft of labor in human history.” Another Microsoft document was cited saying, “almost no one intended for content they created to be used in this fashion, nor are they compensated for its use.”