OpenAI and Microsoft Admit They’re Starting a Web ‘Doom Loop’
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| Source: The Verge | Original article
Newly unsealed court filings in the New York Times’ copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft lay bare internal warnings that the companies themselves described as a “doom loop” for the web. Internal documents, now part of the public record, state that the firms’ large‑language‑model training pipelines – which scrape massive swaths of online content – constitute “the largest theft of labor in human history” and “a complete mockery of the idea of fair use.” The filings argue that this systematic extraction is eroding the quality of information online and threatening the publishing ecosystem that underpins the internet.
The revelations matter because they give the plaintiffs concrete evidence that OpenAI and its cloud partner were aware of the potentially destructive feedback loop their models create, yet proceeded regardless. If a court accepts the argument that the companies knowingly undermined the web’s economic and informational foundations, it could reshape the legal landscape for AI training data, intensify calls for stricter copyright enforcement, and force a rethink of how generative AI systems are fed with publicly available text.
As we reported on 18 September, internal Microsoft and OpenAI memos already flagged the “doom loop” risk. The unsealed documents now tie those concerns directly to the ongoing litigation. The next steps to watch are the court’s rulings on liability and any injunctive relief, as well as possible regulatory responses in Europe and the United States. Both firms may need to adjust data‑collection practices, negotiate broader licensing deals with publishers, or develop technical safeguards to mitigate the loop that critics say is “destroying the web.”
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