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

According to internal Microsoft research, the company's AI-powered Copilot technology could potentially reduce the number of clicks from users to publications like The New York Times by up to 93% compared to Microsoft's own search engine, Bing. This, according to former Microsoft Director of Applied Science Brent Hecht, represents a "theft of labor on an unprecedented scale," describing AI scraping as "the largest theft of labor in human history."

Hecht's claim emerged from a 2023 New York Times lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI, which accused the tech giants of copying and using copyrighted work without permission. The lawsuit alleges that OpenAI scraped over 91,000 pieces of content from publications including The New York Times, Daily News, and the Center for Investigative Reporting, removing copyright notices from the data used to train their models.

While the Trump administration has supported AI scraping, arguing that constraining LLM development under a misunderstanding of fair use doctrine would hinder American prosperity and economic mobility, the case is still ongoing and impacts numerous other publications.