Microsoft executive called OpenAI's web scraping the 'largest theft of labor in human history'

Executives from OpenAI and Microsoft were reportedly worried about ChatGPT training that scraped millions of news articles, The New York Times reported. Microsoft's director of Applied Science, Dr. Brent Hecht, said OpenAI's work was akin to the "largest theft of labor in human history" that could create a "doom loop," while OpenAI exec Nick Turley said it represented an "existential threat to publishers." Those comments came out of newly unsealed court documents as part of a lawsuit launched by The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023. Only snippets from the documents were made public without any context around them. Several such lawsuits have already swung in favor of AI companies, but judges have pointedly stated that their rulings were made because the law around AI use has yet to be settled.