Microsoft Exec Calls AI Scraping 'Largest Theft of Labor in Human History'

A recent unsealed filing has shed light on Microsoft's involvement in AI scraping, with its applied-science chief calling it 'the largest theft of labor in human history.'

The internal memo, written by Brent Hecht in January 2023, states that large models 'hoovering up' the world's work amount to an 'astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions.'

The lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft alleges that they bypassed paywalls undetected, mass-scraped content, and deliberately stripped copyright management information from training data.

The Project Mango dataset is alleged to contain copies of at least 160,903 unique works from news publishers. The filing marks a significant development in the case, which was filed in December 2023 and has previously seen redacted exhibits.