New York Times Lawsuit Reveals AI Executives Admit Models Trained on Massive Copyrighted Content

The copyright lawsuit between The New York Times and OpenAI, Microsoft is still ongoing. A recently unsealed motion shows that several AI industry executives admitted training AI models requires relying on copyrighted content at an astonishing scale.

The motion, filed by The New York Times, directly quotes Microsoft's applied science head Brent Hecht and OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman. Hecht called the massive AI industry buildout "the largest theft of labor in human history." Brockman said generative AI poses an "existential threat" to publishers because these products are essentially substitutes.

The New York Times accuses OpenAI and Microsoft of copying millions of its copyrighted articles without permission to train commercial AI products. The plaintiff's lawyers argue these executive statements could "completely destroy" the defendants' fair use defense.

The lawsuit began in 2023, and the presiding judge is expected to decide sometime in 2027 whether to allow the case to go to trial.