Microsoft exec said AI scraping was ‘the largest theft of labor in human history,’ lawsuit filings reveal

• Microsoft exec describes AI scraping as "astonishing theft" of labor
• Copilot reportedly reduced NYT click-throughs by 93% compared with Bing
• Trump administration supports scraping so that the US can retain its AI dominance

In an earlier January 2023 memo uncovered in recently unredacted court filings, Microsoft Director of Applied Science Brent Hecht accused AI scraping of being an "astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions" (via TechCrunch).

With generative AI posing a "real risk" of disrupting the employment of the same people who unwillingly provided that training data, Hecht went on to describe scraping as "the largest theft of labor in human history."

This comes from a 2023 New York Times case against Microsoft and OpenAI, when the publication accused the AI giants of copying and using its copyrighted work without permission.

AI scraping described as mass theft

Microsoft's own internal research reportedly found that Copilot could reduce click-throughs to The...

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