Microsoft downplays director's 'largest theft of labor' admission in NYT suit
Unsealed court filings quote Microsoft and OpenAI staff admitting AI scraping is theft and an 'existential threat' to publishers; Microsoft now disavows the remarks.
Part of a larger narrative
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What to know
- Unsealed filings in The New York Times' three-year-old suit quote a Microsoft director calling AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history' and an internal document warning of a 'doom loop' destroying the web.
- The admissions target the weakest point of the fair-use defense: evidence that AI products substitute for and financially harm the original content markets, including a 93% drop in NYT click-throughs from Bing/Copilot.
- Microsoft has moved to disown the comments, saying they reflect one employee's personal, academic viewpoint rather than the company's legal position.
- The filings arrive alongside a Trump administration brief backing OpenAI's fair-use defense and a separate suit against OpenAI by Mother Jones, keeping the case's outcome consequential for the wider AI copyright landscape.
The dispute Whether an executive's internal candor about 'theft' is a meaningful legal admission against fair use, or, as Microsoft argues, just one employee's personal opinion that doesn't bind the company. · positions read across 198 posts and comments
The filings confirm what critics always said: AI companies knowingly stole creators' work and are only now being caught.
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“Hey so all tbe time they were stealing black content? And not knowing how to support culture? THEY KNEW”
blackamazon.bsky.social · Bluesky ↗
Even with this admission, nothing will actually stop or slow AI companies' practices.
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“Is the party ending or are they just admitting it's bad and will carry on as usual. And are governments who were and are all too happy to try to hop on the bandwagon ... going to understand that we need to put this genie back in the…”
chris@mstdn.chrisalemany.ca · Mastodon ↗
Whether training on copyrighted works is genuinely 'theft' is a harder ethical and legal question than the headlines suggest.
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“Many people's moral systems (and our legal system) are typically deontological ... The only deontological argument I can see against training LLMs on copyrighted data is that some people think it's morally and legally wr...”
throwawayk7h · Hacker News ↗
Brent Hecht Microsoft Director of Applied Science
Satya Nadella Microsoft CEONick Turley OpenAI Head of ChatGPT
Greg Brockman OpenAI President/cofounderJordan Usdan GM, Data Strategy and Ops, Microsoft AIThe New York Times Plaintiff
How it unfolded 5 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump articlespostscomments
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Microsoft distances itself from Hecht's remarks
Microsoft spokesperson Alex Haurek said Hecht's comments reflect a single employee's personal view, not company policy, while a separate Microsoft filing from Jordan Usdan characterized Hecht as holding deliberately adversarial, academic views not representative of Microsoft's position.
“These comments reflect one employee's individual perspective, are not a legal analysis, and do not represent the company's views.”
— Alex Haurek, Microsoft spokesperson -
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As revealed in recently unsealed court documents, Microsoft’s Director of Applied Science calls ChatGPT and Copilot’s harvesting of data the “largest theft of labor in human history” and says that Microsoft’s defense makes a “complete mockery of the idea of ‘fair use.’”
2 more of the top 3 · 22 posts in this stretch
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From the excellent @ jasonkoebler on @ 404mediaco : "OpenAI’s and Microsoft’s lawyers have been trying to argue that their model training is fair use and transformative under copyright law and that they are building something that is fundamentally different from the human labor that it was trained on. But internally, these executives know that…
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Somebody should throw molotov cocktails at the contributors of CommonCrawl[1], for they have "stolen" from "the people". /s obv.It never ceases to amaze me how people affirm the concept of intellectual property, enforced by states, while maintaining "exceptions" that are fundamentally incompatible with the very concept of what they are…
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Mother Jones frames the filings as vindication of its own suit
Mother Jones, which separately sued OpenAI, publicized the unsealed admissions and referenced Trump administration involvement in the broader litigation as it promoted its case against the company.
“We've faced down dark-money billionaires and shadowy charities, the Reagan administration's IRS, and Trump's Pentagon. So we're fighting this giant, too.”
— Mother Jones -
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Just as not all communities are rolling over for data centers, not all newsrooms are sitting back and letting AI steal our content. Some of us are fighting back.
2 more of the top 3 · 38 posts in this stretch
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1789684664 | Docs in AI copyright suit reveal startling admission by Microsoft exec | https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2026/09/17/new-docs-in-a-i-c... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49747643 | 0 comments1789690028 | Microsoft exec called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human |…
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TL;DR: Unsealed court documents reveal that OpenAI and Microsoft recognized their actions could lead to a 'doom loop' detrimental to the web, labeling their data scraping as the 'largest theft of labor in human history.' The revelations raise critical questions about the ethical implications of AI development. https://www…
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EFF argues the scraping is exactly what copyright law intends
Commentary on the filings noted the Electronic Frontier Foundation had filed an amicus brief in the case arguing that using works to train models serves copyright's constitutional purpose of promoting progress, cutting against the 'theft' framing.
“This case is about, as Microsoft's Director of Applied Science put it, an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions; perhaps the largest theft of labor in human history.”
— NYT court filing (quoting Brent Hecht), Plaintiff's legal filing · source -
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So, OpenAI admits two things in disclosures presented to the court : That their products are utterly dependent on work ingested without compensation. That their derived product is directly substituting for this work, removing the economic incentive to perform that work in the first place. Meanwhile, the EFF filed an amicus brief in the case…
2 more of the top 3 · 83 posts in this stretch
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techcrunch.com/2026/09/17/m... So, Microsoft, you're going to remove the stolen data from Copilot and by admission ChatGPT, right? Oh haha of course not. Big corp can steal whatever they want and call it a product. Fuck you
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Source:https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.61...p. 1"This case is about, as Microsoft's Director of Applied Science put it, an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions; SF1437, perhaps the largest theft of labor in human history. SF1652"p.11"As Microsoft recognized: millions of people around the world will soon consider…
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Online reaction wave calls the admissions damning
The TechCrunch and 404 Media stories drew a large wave of social and forum reaction, with commenters framing the filings as confirmation that AI companies knowingly built products on stolen work, particularly content from marginalized creators.
“Hey so all tbe time they were stealing black content? And not knowing how to support culture? THEY KNEW…”
— blackamazon.bsky.social -
Here is a Microsoft executive appearing to admit that AI training is massive theft.
2 more of the top 3 · 45 posts in this stretch
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The unsealed motion for summary judgment in the NYT/OpenAI/Microsoft case is a banger. https:// arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20 26/09/microsoft-exec-called-ai-scraping-the-largest-theft-of-labor-in-human-history Full document: https:// cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content /uploads/2026/09/News-orgs-v-OpenAI-Microsoft-Memo-9-17-26.pdf
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Hey so all tbe time they were stealing black content? And not knowing how to support culture ? THEY KNEW BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN THE TECH OLOGY OF PRINT POST COLONIALISM EVER THUS
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Unsealed filing shows Microsoft, OpenAI admitted AI 'theft'
A newly unredacted motion for summary judgment in The New York Times' suit reveals Microsoft director Brent Hecht called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history' and a 'complete mockery of fair use,' an internal Microsoft document warned of a 'doom loop' destroying the web, and OpenAI's Nick Turley wrote that chatbots pose an 'existential threat' to publishers.
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first by HN Best, 8d ago · also Engadget, Tom's Hardware, The Times, TechSpot, New York Times, HN Frontpage +3
5 more headlines
- Microsoft executive called OpenAI's web scraping the 'largest theft of labor in human history' Engadget · 8d ago
- 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 Mastodon · 8d ago
- AI training ‘largest theft of labour in history’, says Microsoft memo The Times · 7d ago
- Microsoft exec says AI training might be the "largest labor theft in human history" TechSpot · 7d ago
- Microsoft and OpenAI Workers Worry About ‘Largest Theft of Labor’ in History New York Times · 7d ago
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first by Washington Post, 6d ago · also New York Post, NY Post, HN Best, HN Frontpage, Ghacks
3 more headlines
- Microsoft, OpenAI workers privately worried their work is ‘largest theft of labor in human history’ New York Post · 6d ago
- Microsoft director: AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history' HN Best · 6d ago
- Court Filing Shows Microsoft Exec Called AI Training the "Largest Labor Theft in Human History" Ghacks · 6d ago
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NEW: Leaked documents shows the Albanese government has floated 2 ways to let AI companies train their models on Australian content One would let companies like OpenAI and Anthropic do this without paying some creators if they strike enough deals deals with enough rights holders
2 more of the top 3 · 10 posts in this stretch
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I think Google using other poeple's content to generate search results basically falls under fair use. A German court just found Google liable for misleading AI results. It found their work was not just derivative but included independent, new and substantial statements, which I think many of us have experienced.
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Labor is giving AI companies right to steal creatives works by easing restrictions in order to 'fast-track' data center approvals "Compromise revealed as senior personnel from OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, meets Albanese ministers" "The Albanese government is considering giving AI companies access to Australian creatives’ works by default as it…
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background
Trump administration backs OpenAI's fair-use defense — Earlier in September, the Trump administration filed a brief supporting OpenAI's argument that training on unlicensed copyrighted material constitutes fair use, ahead of the unsealing of the damaging internal documents.
Also covered reported alongside — the timeline has no entry for these yet
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5 outlets New docs in AI copyright suit reveal startling admission by Microsoft exec over ‘astonishing theft’
first by Mercury News, 7d ago · also Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel
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4 outlets OpenAI, Microsoft executives’ quotes on AI training threaten copyright defense, news outlets argue
first by Investing.com News, 8d ago · also Straits Times, Channel News Asia, Reuters
1 more headline
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first by The Times of India, 8d ago · also The Hindu
1 more headline
- New York Times alleges Microsoft, OpenAI knew using news content was theft The Hindu · 8d ago
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first by Straits Times, 8d ago · also NYT
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first by Guardian Tech, 10d ago · also Guardian
2 more headlines
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first by ABC Australia, 10d ago · also ABC News & Headlines – Australian Broadcasting Corporation
1 more headline
- Leaked AI copyright proposal triggers political firestorm ABC News & Headlines – Australian Broadcasting Corporation · 9d ago
and 9 smaller pieces
What people are saying 13 voices from 5 sites · best of 198 · verbatim
- Will these internal admissions actually weaken OpenAI and Microsoft's fair-use defense in court?
- Does Microsoft's attempt to distance itself from Hecht's statements hold up given he wrote them in official internal documents?
- How will the Trump administration's brief supporting OpenAI's fair-use argument interact with this evidence?
- Sep 20
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A Microsoft executive has called AI training practices "the largest theft of labor in human history," according to new files in our lawsuit against OpenAI.
- Sep 19
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Many people's moral systems (and our legal system) are typically deontological. That is to say, the consequence of an action (or scale) aren't relevant to whether it's okay or not, so long as the action doesn't break any particular moral rule.There's no rule against learning from books in general. (Maybe only for some particular books.) There's no…
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Patents were always classist hurdle to innovation, presenting consolidation as growth. We have gotten to the point we can measure most of the contribution and where it enters the market, the state should take half the contribution to the tax base and send it to the inventor; forcing businesses to compete by producing more with less rather than…
- Sep 18
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Is the party ending or are they just admitting it's bad and will carry on as usual. And are governments who were and are all too happy to try to hop on the bandwagon (*cough* Carney *cough*) going to understand that we need to put this genie back in the bottle!? "Executives working on AI at Microsoft and OpenAI admitted what its critics have been…
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We know what is going inside black holes in other galaxies, we know the details of Israel nuclear program..., the Windows source code got leaked, we got the NSA tools and full details and locations of the Echelon architecture... Phds in Maths warns us daily about the terrible secrets of the evil AI inside their labs. How, their numeric matrices…
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"Executives working on AI at Microsoft and OpenAI admitted what its critics have been saying all along: Large language models are predatory pieces of technology that have been built on what a Microsoft executive called “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” and the “largest theft of labor in human history.” An internal Microsoft…
- Sep 17
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It's sad that some people think there's any stopping these companies. Like as if even a government telling them not to would do anything. Threat of fines not enforceable in their country of operation or so pathetically small to a multibillion dollar company that it's a negligible cost of doing business? They don't give a shit. They've already…
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An opinion piece is now a source of absolute truth apparently. All we have is a proposal from industry for the government to consider. They also received proposals from creative groups that AI companies need to obtain explicit permission from each creator and financial compensation before using anything but that doesn't seem to get much…
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RE: https:// infosec.exchange/@mttaggart/11 7288549065128153 "Perhaps most explosively, Microsoft Director of Applied Science Brent Hecht repeatedly warned in documents that scraping news for AI training was “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” calling it perhaps the “largest theft of labor in human history,” news orgs said. In…
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woah. Court just unsealed Summary Judgment motions in New York Times v OpenAI / Microsoft. Easy to see why the AI companies had so many redactions (pink). Their own people wrote the lede for NYT, the “largest theft of labor in human history”... “more and more substitutive...” /1
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new unredacted filings in the publishers (including my employer) vs OpenAI and Microsoft lawsuit Microsoft's Director of applied science calls LLM training “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions” asked MSFT and OAI for comment, nothing yet. NYT declines comment.
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This might be the biggest admission in any of the 100+ AI copyright lawsuits. OpenAI & Microsoft execs admit the case is about “the largest theft of labor in human history”, that publishers face an “existential threat” from their products, and that those products
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Straight from OpenAI's Brockman and Microsoft's Nadella - ‘doom loop’ for the entire web [as they vacuum up and substitute the work of journalism and threaten their economic foundations]. /2