Microsoft knows it robbed publishers to train AI. It just doesn’t care

Ever since OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot and its offspring Microsoft Copilot were launched, critics have pointed out that both products — and all other generative AI tools — have been built using billions of dollars of stolen intellectual property. Training AI models requires vast amounts of written material, especially books, newspapers, and magazine articles. OpenAI, Microsoft, and other Big AI firms have been stealing every piece of intellectual property (IP) they can find for training. With few exceptions, instead of paying the people and publishers who labored to create that intellectual property, Big AI steals it and call it “fair use.” But just-released evidence shows that from the start, many employees and executives at Microsoft and OpenAI warned their companies that they were committing theft — and added that doing so could put newspapers and magazines out of business. The companies ignored them and went full speed ahead. All that and more came out last month in newly unsealed court documents filed in a lawsuit by The New York Times and others against Microsoft and OpenAI for IP theft. The filing cites memos, reports, and statements by Microsoft employees and execs that show …

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