‘The largest theft of labor in human history:’ Court docs reveal Microsoft exec predicted AI ‘doom loops’ could hollow out the internet
The New York Times filed a major copyright lawsuit in December 2023 against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging the companies’ AI models improperly trained on substantial amounts of Times journalism without permission or compensation.
Recently unsealed court documents have revealed internal communications from executives at both companies, providing rare insight into their awareness of potential harms. Microsoft’s director of applied science, Brent Hecht, made particularly striking statements in internal presentations warning of AI “doom loops” that could undermine the internet’s viability.
According to the filing, Copilot’s answer engine has had a significant negative impact on the Times’ business, with the company’s click-through rate allegedly plummeting by figures as high as 93%. This suggests that users obtaining AI-generated summaries of news content are bypassing the Times’ website, directly impacting the publisher’s traffic and revenue.
The case represents one of the most significant copyright disputes in recent memory, centering on whether training large language models on copyrighted content constitutes fair use. The unsealed documents indicate that executives at these companies had internal concerns about these systems’ effects on publishers and the broader information ecosystem, even as they continued developing them.