Microsoft Director privately admits AI was the largest labor theft in history, court papers show
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| Source: Mastodon | Original article
Microsoft’s internal admission that training its AI systems amounts to “the largest theft of labour in human history” has now been documented in unsealed court filings. The records show a Microsoft director, alongside OpenAI executives, acknowledging that the companies used “millions of copyrighted articles” without permission to train large‑language models. The New York Times, cited in the filings, argues that the practice constitutes clear copyright infringement.
The revelation builds on statements made earlier this month, when a senior Microsoft official publicly described AI‑driven web scraping as the biggest theft of human work ever. Those remarks were highlighted in our coverage of the so‑called “doom loop” that pits OpenAI and Microsoft against the very web they rely on for data. The newly released documents move the debate from rhetoric to legal fact, confirming that top executives were aware of the scale of unlicensed content ingestion.
Why it matters is twofold. First, the admission could reshape ongoing litigation over AI training data, giving plaintiffs a concrete admission of liability that may accelerate settlements or judgments against the tech giants. Second, it intensifies scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers across Europe and the United States, who are already debating whether existing copyright law adequately covers AI‑generated outputs and the data pipelines that feed them.
What to watch next are the court’s next motions and any potential class‑action filings that may cite the unsealed testimony. Regulators may also use the documents to justify stricter data‑use rules or to compel transparency disclosures from AI developers. As the legal battle unfolds, the industry will be forced to confront whether the current model of mass data scraping can survive under heightened copyright enforcement.
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