The New York Times alleges that Microsoft and OpenAI knew the newspaper’s copyrighted news content was being used without permission to train AI models. In a court document unsealed, the paper says internal communications describe the practice as “astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions,” and raises claims about how this content was obtained and used for model training.
The outlet reports focus on different parts of the filing. Several sources cite remarks attributed to OpenAI and Microsoft executives, including comments suggesting awareness of bypassing paywalls and characterizations of the conduct as potentially the “largest theft of labor in human history.” Other coverage emphasizes the scale of what the filing describes, saying OpenAI scraped content from more than 10 million articles, with a significant portion coming from the New York Times.
Some reports also provide broader context about the impact on publishers, noting continuing concerns that AI systems reduce traffic to news websites even after OpenAI signed content deals with publishers following ChatGPT’s launch in 2022. The story centers on the allegations in the lawsuit rather than a court ruling on liability.
