Microsoft director: AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history'

Microsoft director: AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history'tomshardware.com

The NYT argues that OpenAI and Microsoft infringed upon its copyright over thousands of news articles.

190 points•jonbaer•11 days ago•52 comments•

#microsoft #theft #scraping #director #labor #history #ai #human

52 comments

Only to be topped by the massive amount of IP that Copilot is possibly secretly harvesting at present. We already believe OpenAI/Anthropic are doing it, what’s to stop Microsoft from attempting to improve their competitive advantage by surreptitiously using their role as a MiTM between end user Corporations and Model servers.

downrightmike11 days ago

"Oh no did that 'Allow us to train on your org's data' toggle get turned on after the last update? We're so sorry. No we won;t delete the data, the toggle was -ON- what part of that don't you get??

Smoofer9 days ago

what’s to stop Microsoft from attempting to improve their competitive advantage by surreptitiously using their role as a MiTM between end user Corporations and Model servers

Massive lawsuits from companies that have enterprise data protection contracts with them?

moostee11 days ago

FUD.

KetoManx6410 days ago

Yet the Analytics toggles and group policies keep getting toggled back on with Windows Updates..

malfist11 days ago

Who is this we?

adamddev111 days ago

I wrote something original in a language learning grammar online. I coined a term to describe something about how a certain language with negative language functions.

I tried talking to an LLM about it and sure and enough, it had scraped it and learned to use that terminology and explanation that I made up. I asked the LLM, "Where did that concept/term come from, who made it up?" It did a bunch of searching and tried to site a whole bunch of other sources which did NOT contain the terms of the explanation I had written. It simply would not cite or mention my source. It kept parroting my material semi-correctly and hiding the source. By any other actor that would be an egregious act of sloppiness, dishonesty, and plagiarism.

Generative AI is speed-running a widespread corruption of truth. I do not believe any of the gains are worth this.

baranul11 days ago

Your comment illustrates that AI companies are playing a kind of shell game. On the one hand there is theft of IP and violations of copyright, in the middle there is the obscuring of where things come from, and on the other hand there is the selling of it via tokens.

More countries should debatably follow what Japan is doing[1], where they are creating new laws to force AI companies to show their training data and how they collected it.

[1]: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/08/19/japan/ai-traini...

skygazer11 days ago

Your text may well have been in the training corpus, but not searchable with whatever terms and search engine that LLM used after you prompted it. It doesn’t have recall of sources of documents comprising its training corpus, unless the source is widely cited in other of its training documents. Sourcing and provenance aren’t currently an intentional part of LLM training.

That may already have been obvious, and central to the complaint, but I was just knee-jerking to the anthropomorphic language.

layer811 days ago

I would assume the parent understands that. The criticism is about the LLM behavior this results in. Being able to explain a behavior doesn’t necessarily excuse it. By some moral standards, you wouldn’t have trained an LLM that way, or wouldn’t have made it available, given the predictable outcome.

moralestapia11 days ago

>Sourcing and provenance aren’t currently an intentional part of LLM training.

Congrats, brother. That's the issue TFA and GP are bringing up. And I do agree it is unfair and equivalent to (intellectual) theft.

ttoinou11 days ago

France, 1658 <-> World, 2026. AI can also do the reverse : for example very few in the world know that the term midwit was originally coined in french by Blaise Pascal (« demi habiles ») centuries ago.

Yes, that bell curve meme, he wrote about it. It’s not explained anywhere because of the language and culture separation between french and english. But if you ask enough questions to AI, the AI will eventually find about Blaise Pascal and tell you about this unknown link. It’s magic.

bitwize11 days ago

There used to be a meme on Slashdot: "In Soviet Russia, X Ys you!" It came from a joke by Russo-American comedian Yakov Smirnoff: "What a country! In LA, everybody is looking for a party; in Russia, the Party comes looking for you!" But I long wondered if Smirnoff was influenced by his countryman Leon Trotsky who observed: "You may not be interested in the Dialectic, but the Dialectic is interested in you."

theendisney11 days ago

Well done Confucius, you've invented a new creditpocalypse. Its when llms hallucinate new authors for new words. It almost makes it worth starting a blogsurection!

651010 days ago

A day ago blogsurection had zero Google search results, today it has 4 like: "The Rise and Fall of the Blog" and the search llm sniplet explains what the word means.

mistrial911 days ago

> I do not believe any of the gains are worth this.

You are authoring original work.. the Baron in the Castle collected your work and uses it. Who becomes wealthy and how?

adamddev111 days ago

It's more than that though. I authored the original work. Then the Baron in the Castle collected the work and uses it without fully understanding it. The Baron gives it out but in a partly-true, distorted form. He misunderstand how it applies and teaches people false clearly facts with it, with an air of authority. But when people try to find the source argument to see if the Baron is really on track, they have no idea. The Baron is just confidently parroting a compelling sounding set of words.

For me the issue is more about the loss of truth than the loss of my IP.

MentalM11 days ago

That is pretty weak logic. I mean obviously it is the Baron who becomes wealthy. But what follows from this?

By the same logic if Baron bought her baroness masterful dress to enjoy her look in that dress, and you when walked past the Castle saw the baroness in that dress, should you compensate to the Baron or not?

buzer11 days ago

Discussion from yesterday (811 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49752056

hulitu9 days ago

Isn't OpenAI a Microsoft company ?

1vuio0pswjnm711 days ago

1789684664 | Docs in AI copyright suit reveal startling admission by Microsoft exec | https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2026/09/17/new-docs-in-a-i-c... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49747643 | 0 comments

1789690028 | Microsoft exec called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human | https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/17/microsoft-exec-called-ai-s... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49748529 | 4 comments

1789690711 | Inside Microsoft and OpenAI, Worry About Damaging the Publishing Industry | https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/17/technology/microsoft-open... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49748613 | 0 comments

1789712928 | 'Doom Loop': OpenAI and Microsoft Admits LLMs Are Destroying the Web | https://www.404media.co/doom-loop-openai-and-microsoft-admit... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49750788 | 0 comments

1789724707 | Microsoft exec called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history' | https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/17/microsoft-exec-called-ai-s... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49752056 | 838 comments

1789741304 | OpenAI's latest AI revelation is a 'serious situation,' says Microsoft | https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/18/microsoft-ai-ceo-openais-lat... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49754831 | 2 comments

1789796968 | Microsoft agentically ports Copilot runtime to Rust for $120K | https://www.theregister.com/devops/2026/09/18/microsoft-agen... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49763701 | 2 comments

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