Court filings in a copyright case quote employees warning that AI training could threaten creators' livelihoods and publishers' business models #
Microsoft's director of applied science described the use of creators' work to build artificial intelligence as 'an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions', and perhaps 'the largest theft of labour in human history', according to newly unredacted court papers.
The words, attributed to Brent Hecht, open a summary-judgment brief filed by news publishers suing Microsoft and OpenAI over alleged copyright infringement in federal court in New York. The plaintiffs include The New York Times, Daily News titles, Ziff Davis, The Intercept and the Center for Investigative Reporting.
The same Microsoft material said that 'millions of people around the world will soon consider large models hoovering up all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions'. It also acknowledged that 'almost no one intended for content they created to be used in this fashion, nor are they compensated for its use'.
Microsoft Says the Remarks Were Not Company Policy #
Hecht's remarks come from internal documents obtained during discovery.
The publishers are using them to argue that the companies' internal discussions recognised that their AI products could substitute for human labour and affect the economics of journalism, but Microsoft has said the comments reflect one employee's individual perspective and do not represent the company's views.
The same Microsoft material said that 'millions of people around the world will soon consider large models hoovering up all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions'. It also acknowledged that 'almost no one intended for content they created to be used in this fashion, nor are they compensated for its use'.
Hecht's other writings quoted in the brief address the potential consequences of AI training. In one document, he wrote that a ruling in the companies' favour on fair use would arguably 'make a complete mockery of the idea of fair use'.
In another, he wrote that AI systems are useful because they reproduce patterns in their training material. Without a way of passing value back down the supply chain, he said, that 'necessarily threatens the economic stability of those who create the content'.
OpenAI Staff Wrote of Systems That 'Substitute for the Labor' of Creators #
The filing contains similar concerns from within OpenAI. Jack Clark, then OpenAI's policy director and later a co-founder of Anthropic, wrote that the firm's creative AI work would 'increasingly lead to us creating systems that substitute for the labor of the people that define the 'culture" of society'.
Nick Turley, OpenAI's head of ChatGPT, wrote that the company's products 'are largely substitutive, period'. He also wrote that publishers face an 'existential threat' from them.
The publishers say the numbers support their arguments. Microsoft's own data, cited in the brief, recorded substantial falls in click-through rates to news websites when users relied on its AI-powered search experience rather than conventional search.
Reporting on the unsealed filing has described click-through-rate declines of up to 93 per cent for The New York Times and some other publisher sites. Among Times subscribers surveyed who used ChatGPT for news, 36 per cent said this 'means I no longer need news from the New York Times at all', according to the plaintiffs and material cited in the filing.
OpenAI Maintains Training Is Fair Use #
OpenAI has long disputed the publishers' claims. In a statement published in January 2024, the company said 'training AI models using publicly available internet materials is fair use, as supported by long-standing and widely accepted precedents'.
In the same statement, it described word-for-word reproduction of articles as 'a rare bug' it was working to eliminate. It also said The Times's lawsuit was 'without merit'.
OpenAI and Microsoft have both asked Judge Sidney H. Stein to grant summary judgment in their favour. The court had not ruled on the motions as of the latest reports on the unsealed filing.
One of the four factors US courts consider in fair-use cases is the effect of a new use on the market for the original work. The publishers could therefore point to internal statements about the substitutive effects of AI products when arguing about the potential market impact of the companies' technology.
A ruling against Microsoft and OpenAI could affect how AI developers approach licensing and payment for reporting, writing and other creative work used in training. A ruling in their favour could reinforce the companies' position that certain forms of AI training can qualify as fair use without permission.
Either outcome could have implications for writers, artists and publishers beyond the United States.
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