Newly released court documents reveal Microsoft and OpenAI executives expressed concern over AI training practices involving news content. Dr. Brent Hecht, Microsoft's director of Applied Science, described OpenAI's web scraping as the "largest theft of labor in human history," warning it could create a "doom loop" for journalism. OpenAI's Nick Turley called it an "existential threat to publishers." The comments emerged from unsealed materials in The New York Times' 2023 lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. Documents show the companies bypassed paywalls and erased copyright notices to train large language models.

An internal Microsoft 2023 document warned millions would consider the practice "an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions." OpenAI President Greg Brockman was noted reacting "ah nice" to a paywall hack. Despite these admissions, Microsoft disavowed the statements, maintaining its position that AI training falls under "fair use" and that Copilot is not a substitute for publisher journalism. The NYT lawsuit remains pivotal in determining if AI companies can access copyrighted data under fair use doctrines.