Microsoft says virtually nobody was grabbing NYT articles through its chatbot
TL;DR
Microsoft's Copilot rarely reproduces even full sentences from news articles and books, let alone substantive chunks that could substitute for the original, the company says in new legal filings as it fights copyright claims from publishers including The New York Times and book authors. As part of the lawsuit's discovery, Microsoft provided 8.2 million Copilot chat logs to an expert hired by news publishers.
Nauti's Take
The number sounds reassuring, but it remains one party’s claim in an ongoing copyright case. Teams using Copilot for research or content workflows should test how often source wording appears verbatim, whether links and citations survive, and whether the sample was defined by independent criteria.
Sources