Microsoft says almost no one accessed NYT articles through its chatbot
copilot copyright microsoft
| Source: The Verge | Original article
Microsoft says its Copilot chatbot rarely reproduces full sentences from NYT articles or books, per legal filings in its copyright dispute.
Microsoft has turned to the courts to argue that its Copilot chatbot is not a “plagiarism machine.” In fresh legal filings responding to copyright claims from The New York Times and a coalition of book authors, the company says an analysis of more than 8 million user‑generated chat logs shows that fewer than one per cent contain any sequence of 16 words or more that matches a protected source. The data, supplied to an expert as part of the lawsuit’s discovery process, suggests Copilot “rarely reproduces even full sentences from news articles and books, let alone substantive chunks that could substitute for the original,” according to Microsoft’s brief.
The filing arrives as the publishing industry intensifies its pushback against generative AI that can surface copyrighted text. The New York Times has sued several AI providers, alleging that their models generate verbatim excerpts that infringe on the newspaper’s articles. As we reported on 3 September 2026, the case has already drawn political attention, with the Trump administration signalling support for OpenAI’s defense. Microsoft’s data‑driven rebuttal seeks to demonstrate that the scale of alleged copying is negligible, a point it hopes will persuade a federal judge to dismiss or narrow the claims.
What to watch next: the court’s response to Microsoft’s evidence will shape the broader legal landscape for AI‑generated content. Both the plaintiff side and other AI firms are likely to file additional expert analyses, and the outcome could set precedents for how “substantial similarity” is measured in massive language‑model outputs. The next filing deadline, expected later this month, will reveal whether Microsoft’s statistical defence holds enough weight to curb the growing wave of copyright litigation against AI developers.
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