Microsoft exec warned AI could create a ‘doom loop’ for the internet

Newly unsealed court documents reveal that executives from Microsoft and OpenAI have warned that AI technology could create a "doom loop" for the internet. In a legal brief filed in a copyright lawsuit, Microsoft's Director of Applied Science Brent Hecht described OpenAI's decision to train its models on news articles and human-published content as the "largest theft of labor in human history."

Hecht also labeled the process of training AI models on copyrighted works as "an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions." Furthermore, OpenAI's head of ChatGPT admitted that publishers like the New York Times "face an existential threat" from AI products, which he stated were "largely substitutive, period" – designed to replace the source material.

The New York Times filed the lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI in 2023 over their practice of using the paper's news stories to train artificial intelligence models. The publishers argue that by mass-ingesting their news stories without permission, the AI companies violated copyright law and sought a "free ride" by leveraging the newspaper's investment in quality journalism to build substitutive products without payment.

The case has since gathered other plaintiffs, including the New York Daily News, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Intercept, Ziff Davis, and various local newspapers. Executives from both companies argue that using news stories to power their AI systems falls under fair use, a legal framework that protects transformative copies of copyrighted works.

However, the New York Times points to the AI executives' private statements as evidence that their products were designed from the start to replace the material they were trained on, arguing against the fair use defense.