Unsealed docs: Microsoft exec called AI news scraping 'largest theft of labor in human history'
Ars Technica AI · rss · 2026-09-18
A motion unsealed Thursday in the NYT-led copyright suit exposes internal Microsoft documents. Director of Applied Science Brent Hecht repeatedly warned that scraping news for AI training was 'an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions'—perhaps the 'largest theft of labor in human history'—and said mass scraping made 'a complete mockery of the idea of fair use,' contradicting the companies' public fair-use defense. News plaintiffs say the documents show Microsoft and OpenAI understood the threat to news before launching ChatGPT and Copilot.
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