Microsoft Exec Calls A.I. Theft a 'Robbery of Unprecedented Proportions'
A Microsoft executive has made a startling admission in court documents regarding the use of A.I. systems built on the work of others, calling it 'an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions' and possibly the greatest robbery of labor in human history.
The comments were made by Brent Hecht, Director of Applied Science at Microsoft, and were unredacted this week in an ongoing Manhattan lawsuit between news outlets such as The New York Daily News and The New York Times, and tech companies Microsoft and OpenAI.
The suit alleges that Microsoft's Copilot and OpenAI's ChatGPT are severely harming the business models of newspapers by training large language models on stolen stories, which are then regurgitated to users without credit, in violation of copyright laws. The motion for summary judgment filed by the news outlets points to Hecht's comments as evidence that the companies are knowingly committing theft.
The unredacted figures show that Microsoft recorded 83-93% drops in people clicking on links to The Times and The News after using A.I. chatbots, and that survey takers who used to subscribe to The News were 28.6% more likely to ask A.I. for the news instead of paying for a subscription.