Court filings: Microsoft knew AI training data was stolen

Unsealed documents in The New York Times lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI show employees and executives warned since 2020 that training AI on articles and books without permission amounted to intellectual property theft. The warnings were ignored, and one OpenAI executive approved a workaround of the NYT paywall.

• A 2023 memo called using NYT articles "an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions"
• OpenAI's policy director warned Sam Altman in 2020 that AI would substitute for creators' labor
• The head of ChatGPT called AI an "existential threat" to publishers in 2023
• The NYT suit was filed in December 2023; nine more news outlets have joined