Microsoft Staff Asked If AI Scraping Was 'Largest Theft of Labor in Human History'

In brief

• Documents unsealed Thursday come from the New York Times' copyright suit against OpenAI and Microsoft.
• A 2023 Microsoft memo warned the public would see models "hoovering up" their work as "theft of unprecedented proportions."
• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified that anything paywalled should be licensed by whoever wants to use it.

Microsoft employees discussed whether OpenAI's use of news articles amounted to "the largest theft of labor in human history," and could set off a "doom loop" that degraded the models they were building, according to court documents unsealed on Thursday and reported by the New York Times.

The filings come from the suit the Times brought against both companies in late 2023, since joined by eleven other publishers. OpenAI has contested the claims throughout, and the case has already forced it to preserve 20 million ChatGPT conversation logs. Judge Sidney Stein of the Southern District of New York is weighing summary judgment motions, and documents are being unsealed as he does.

"Millions of people around the world will soon consider large models 'hoovering up' all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions," one internal Microsoft document from 2023 said. Large AI models "are a product that destroys its supply chain," the same author wrote.