Microsoft Executive Labels AI Training ‘Largest Theft of Labor in Human History’ in Court Documents

When you’re under oath, even the most guarded executives can’t help but spill the beans. That’s exactly what happened in a freshly unsealed filing in the long‑running lawsuit between the New York Times and the AI giants OpenAI and Microsoft.

The motion, filed on behalf of the newspaper, lifts direct quotes from two senior figures: Brent Hecht, Microsoft’s director of applied science, and Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s co‑founder and president. Both men, in the eyes of the plaintiffs, essentially admit that the very core of today’s generative‑AI boom was built on a “theft of unprecedented proportions.”

Hecht didn’t mince words. He called the AI build‑out “the largest theft of labor in human history.” It sounds almost cinematic, but it’s a legal claim that the Times is using to argue that the AI labs lifted “millions of the plaintiff’s copyrighted articles in their entirety without permission” to train systems that now churn out substitute content for profit.

Brockman echoed a similar sentiment, warning that publishers face an “existential threat” from generative AI—technology that is “largely substitutive, period, and will get more and more substitutive as they get better.” In plain terms, the tools are learning to do the same jobs human writers have done for centuries, only faster and cheaper.

Those admissions, the court filing says, “eviscerate” any defense based on fair use. Hecht even acknowledged that letting the defendants win on a fair‑use argument would be “a complete mockery of the idea of ‘fair use.’”

The lawsuit itself dates back to 2023, when the New York Times first accused OpenAI and Microsoft of siphoning its original reporting to train AI models that now compete with traditional news outlets. The case has been dragging through the courts, and a judge is expected to decide later this year whether it will move forward to a trial slated for 2027.

While the legal battle is still very much alive, the unsealed documents give a rare glimpse into the inner thinking of AI leaders—something that usually stays behind closed doors. Whether those statements become a turning point in the fight over digital copyright remains to be seen.