GoKawiilCourt filing shows Microsoft exec called AI training 'largest labor theft in history'
Newly unsealed documents in The New York Times' copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft reveal internal remarks from Microsoft's Brent Hecht, who predicted the public would eventually see large language model training as unprecedented theft of labor. The filing also cites OpenAI's Greg Brockman acknowledging that ChatGPT can reproduce and complete sentences from NYT articles verbatim.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
These internal admissions undercut the companies' public fair-use defense, which claims AI training on copyrighted material is transformative like human learning. If courts find the practice indefensible, it could force costly licensing deals or model retraining across the industry, reshaping how generative AI companies source data going forward.
- A Microsoft executive privately compared AI training to mass labor theft in unsealed court records.
- OpenAI's own executive admitted ChatGPT can reproduce NYT article text, challenging the fair-use defense.
- The case could set a major precedent for how copyrighted content is used to train AI models.
Source: techspot.com — Daniel Sims, 2026-09-18
Published there as: “Microsoft exec says AI training might be the "largest labor theft in human history"”
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