A Microsoft executive described AI scraping as the 'largest theft of labor in human history,' reportedly amid concerns at both companies about ChatGPT training on millions of scraped news articles.
Newly unsealed court filings show a Microsoft executive privately called AI scraping "the largest theft of labor in human history" while Microsoft and OpenAI scraped paywalled Times content and built datasets from it, with internal warnings that it would gut publishers.
Why it matters: The filings show the companies privately acknowledged the harm of their data practices while continuing them, which bears on the publishers' case against them.
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Microsoft executive called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history'
Primary source
“Newly unsealed court filings show Microsoft privately called OpenAI's data practices "theft" while both companies scraped paywalled Times content, built datasets from it, and warned internally it would gut publishers.”
Reporting from a publisher outside the organisation being covered.
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