Microsoft exec called AI scraping ‘the largest theft of labor in human history,’ new unredacted filings reveal

New unredacted information in the copyright lawsuit The New York Times brought against OpenAI and Microsoft three years ago reveals an admission that AI scraping was tantamount to theft, and that AI products pose a major threat to publications.

Per the lawsuit, a top Microsoft executive privately described the companies’ AI training practices as “theft,” and OpenAI’s own leadership said its AI models posed an “existential threat” to the publishers and journalists whose work trained them.

The unsealed material also details how the companies allegedly obtained and used that content by bypassing paywalls undetected, building training datasets via mass scraping, and deliberately stripping copyright notices from training data.

It’s worth noting that much of the new information comes from The Times’ own brief, not the underlying exhibits, which remain sealed. The quotes below are presented without their original context.