Unredacted Times filing quotes Microsoft scientist calling AI scraping historic theft

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Published Thursday, September 17, 2026 · 8:10 PM EDT

Newly unredacted material in The New York Times copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft quotes Microsoft director of Applied Science Brent Hecht calling the firms' training-data practices "the largest theft of labor in human history." The Times brief also cites ChatGPT head Nick Turley describing publisher-facing chatbots as an "existential threat" that is "largely substitutive," and Microsoft data showing Copilot cut Times click-through rates by as much as 93% versus Bing search. The filing alleges OpenAI mid-training datasets contained more than 91,692 copies of works from the Times, Daily News, and Center for Investigative Reporting, and that staff discussed circumventing paywalls. Underlying exhibits remain sealed, quotes appear without original context, and neither company commented.

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