Microsoft exec called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history,' new unredacted filings reveal

Newly unsealed court filings report that a Microsoft executive privately described AI data scraping as “the largest theft of labor in human history.” The filings, made public this week, indicate that Microsoft and OpenAI both drew on paywalled New York Times content while building training datasets for large language models, according to the unredacted documents.

Internal communications cited in the filings reportedly show employees at the companies warning that such practices could severely damage the publishing industry’s business model. TechCrunch, which first reported the newly unsealed material, states that the comments were made privately even as the practices continued.

The disclosures arrive amid ongoing litigation over how AI companies obtained and used copyrighted material to train their systems. The New York Times has pursued legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft over the alleged use of its articles without authorization or compensation.

The filings do not resolve the underlying legal questions, but they place on the record an acknowledgment, from within one of the companies being sued, that its own data practices raised serious ethical concerns. TechCrunch and outlets following the Hacker News discussion note that the executive’s characterization was made in internal discourse rather than public statements, and became known only through the unsealing of the court record.