Unsealed 2023 Memos Show Microsoft, OpenAI Ignored AI Copyright Warnings

2 articles · Updated · Computerworld · Oct 14

Newly unsealed court filings in The New York Times lawsuit show Microsoft and OpenAI received internal warnings as early as 2020 and 2023 that training AI models on copyrighted news content could be illegal.
A January 2023 Microsoft memo by applied science director Brent Hecht called the practice “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” while OpenAI executive Nick Turley warned in June 2023 that AI posed an “existential threat” to publishers.
The filings also cite an OpenAI engineer describing “a hack to get around nytimes paywall,” with president Greg Brockman replying “ah, nice,” bolstering claims the companies knowingly used protected material.
The Times sued in December 2023, alleging ChatGPT and Copilot trained on millions of its articles, reproduced them verbatim, diverted subscribers and ad revenue, and should have datasets containing its content destroyed.
Nine other news organizations, including the New York Daily News and the Center for Investigative Reporting, have since joined the case, widening the stakes for how courts treat AI training on copyrighted material.