Newly unsealed court filings in The New York Times’ copyright case against Microsoft and OpenAI show that employees inside the companies privately debated whether training AI models on news articles amounted to 「the largest theft of labor in human history」 and could trigger a 「doom loop」 that weakened the very models they were building. The documents were reported by The New York Times after they were unsealed on Thursday.
Filings come from the Times lawsuit filed in late 2023
The documents are part of the lawsuit The New York Times filed against both companies in late 2023. Eleven other publishers later joined the case. OpenAI has disputed the claims throughout the litigation, and the case has already required the company to preserve 20 million ChatGPT conversation logs.
Judge Sidney Stein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York is now considering summary judgment motions, and documents are being unsealed as that process moves forward.
Microsoft memo warned large models could destroy their own supply chain
One internal Microsoft document from 2023 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.」 The same author wrote that large AI models 「are a product that destroys its supply chain.」
Microsoft said in a filing that the memos were written by Brent Hecht, a director of applied science who also held a position at Northwestern University. The company said the documents did not reflect Microsoft’s views, adding that Hecht was not a decision-maker and was employed to present 「divergent and asymmetric perspectives.」
Nadella said paywalled content should be licensed
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified that 「anything that is paywalled should be licensed by anyone who wants to use it.」 He also said that if he had known OpenAI was training on paywalled content, he would have exercised Microsoft’s right to require the company to retrain its models.
A Microsoft spokesperson said Nadella was speaking in broad terms about how people find and consume information.
OpenAI messages discussed bypassing the Times paywall
At OpenAI, one staffer told president Greg Brockman about building a 「hack」 to bypass The New York Times paywall. Brockman replied: 「ah nice.」
Nick Turley, who led the ChatGPT team, wrote in June 2023 that AI posed an 「existential threat」 to publishers. In February 2024, he wrote that AI products 「will get more and more substitutive as they get better.」 In another statement, he wrote that AI 「products are largely substitutive, period.」
Internal records also challenged claims that chatbots send traffic back
An OpenAI engineer wrote in February 2023 that 「no matter how prominently we show the links, users won’t click,」 a conclusion that cuts against the argument that chatbots return traffic to publishers.
In a 2020 memo to Brockman and Sam Altman, then-policy director Jack Clark warned that the company was 「creating systems that substitute for the labor of the people that define the ‘culture’ of society,」 and would 「become the symbol of how Silicon Valley is thoughtlessly stepping into other parts of life and leaving a mess on the carpet.」 Clark later left and co-founded Anthropic. Anthropic referred a request for comment from The New York Times back to OpenAI.
Microsoft and OpenAI still argue the training was fair use
Both companies maintain that the training was fair use, arguing that articles were transformed into new work rather than used as substitutes for the originals.
「The world can see what OpenAI and Microsoft thought all along about the fairness of their own behavior,」 said Steven Lieberman, who represents the New York Daily News and seven other newspapers.
The Times, which is itself a plaintiff in the case, declined to comment to its own reporters. According to the report, OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment.