OpenAI and Microsoft knew they were starting a ‘doom loop’ for the web
TL;DR
Recently unsealed court documents in the New York Times' case against OpenAI and Microsoft are pretty damning. The companies' own documentation warned that it was starting a "doom loop" that would damage the web, characterized its scraping of data to train its models as the "largest theft of labor in human history," and that it made a "complete mockery of the idea of fair use. " Many of the most eye-catching quotes from the document come from Microsoft's Director of Applied Science, Brent Hecht.
Nauti's Take
For publishers this is an opportunity: internal warnings strengthen their hand in licensing deals and in pushing for clearer rules on training data. The limit is the trial itself, since quotes from a single researcher are no ruling on fair use.
Anyone publishing content should review licensing terms and crawler rules now, while teams building on OpenAI models should follow the case with caution.
Sources