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OpenAI, Microsoft executives' quotes on AI training threaten copyright defense, news outlets argue

New court documents unsealed Thursday reveal Microsoft and OpenAI executives privately admitted their scraping practices pose an "existential threat" to news publishers, potentially undermining their legal defense.
The New York Times and other outlets filed a landmark copyright lawsuit three years ago alleging the companies violated copyright law by training generative AI models on stolen content without compensation.
Microsoft Director of Applied Science Brent Hecht internally described the data scraping as "an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions," while OpenAI leadership allegedly used hacks to bypass paywalls for training data.
Attorneys for the news publishers argue these internal admissions prove the companies knowingly committed theft, rejecting claims that their products transform content in a manner consistent with fair use.
Internal data shows ChatGPT prompts for reliable reporting reach about 1 million per week, largely substituting for paid subscriptions, as industry experts warn this "doom loop" threatens local news economics.

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TNB Tech Minute: Top OpenAI and Microsoft Staff Knew Scraping News Websites was an ‘Existential Threat’

WSJ Tech News Briefing discuss unsealed NYT lawsuit filings alleging OpenAI and Microsoft knew news-site scraping threatened publishers while arguing fair use

1 month ago·New York, US

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Indian Express

Lean Left

‘Largest theft of labour’: What new NYT filings reveal about its case against OpenAI, Microsoft

Newly unsealed filings shed light on what OpenAI and Microsoft knew about AI training data. They also reveal concerns over AI products replacing visits to news websites.

1 month ago·Noida, India

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Common Dreams

Left

'Elite Crime Spree': AI Execs Admit Scraping of News Outlets Was 'Largest Theft of Labor' in History

Unsealed documents reveal AI giants' plan to replace journalists with stolen content, posing an existential threat to news publishers.

1 month ago·Portland, United States

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Wonkette

Far Left

OpenAI And Microsoft Knew Their Sh*t Would Kill Newspapers Like Big Tobacco Knew About Lung Cancer And Big Oil Knew About Climate Change

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1 month ago·Detroit, United States

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Lietuvos Radijas ir Televizija

Center

The New York Times: OpenAI Committed "Stunning Theft on an Unprecedented Scale"

US artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI committed "stunning theft on an unprecedented scale" when it used millions of news articles to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models, The New York Times said in a court document published on Thursday.

1 month ago·Vilnius, Lithuania

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Engadget

Lean Left

Microsoft executive called OpenAI's web scraping the 'largest theft of labor in human history'

Executives from OpenAI and Microsoft were reportedly worried about ChatGPT training that scraped millions of news articles.

1 month ago·Fishers, United States

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NRC Handelsblad

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OpenAI Realized that Using Newspaper Articles for AI Training Would Threaten the Survival of News Publishers.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, realized that its use of millions of copyrighted newspaper articles to train large language models for artificial…

1 month ago·Amsterdam, Netherlands (Kingdom of the)

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