Microsoft exec called AI scraping the “largest theft of labor in human history”
Internal Microsoft and OpenAI emails, apparently surfaced in litigation, show a senior Microsoft executive describing AI scraping of news content as the largest theft of labor in human history, and expressing concern that the practice could trigger a destructive cycle that collapses news organizations.
Why this matters: When a tech executive uses the word 'theft' internally, that is different from a publisher complaining publicly. It suggests people inside these companies knew the scraping model was extractive and worried about what it would do to the organizations being scraped. News publishers have been warning about this for years. The 'doom loop' framing matters too. If AI trains on journalism, then undercuts the business model that funds journalism, then has less quality journalism to train on, everyone loses. These emails make it harder to argue that nobody saw it coming.
Who should care: General readers · AI governance · Policy
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