Internal Files Reveal AI Giants Knew Scraping Was Theft

The unsealed records, released as part of a lawsuit brought by The New York Times and 11 other outlets, detail a deliberate strategy to hoover up intellectual property. Microsoft’s director of applied science, Brent Hecht, explicitly noted that their large language models were products destined to destroy their own supply chain. Similarly, OpenAI staff identified the technology as an existential threat to news publishers, admitting that the goal was to create increasingly substitutive systems.

Evidence presented to Judge Sidney H. Stein of the Southern District of New York shows the companies went beyond mere scraping. Developers created a hack specifically to bypass paywalls and harvest protected content, a move that prompted a casual "Ah nice" from OpenAI President Greg Brockman. Despite these internal admissions of bad faith, both firms maintain in court that their actions fall under "fair use" protections. Critics argue this discrepancy highlights a dangerous double standard, where Silicon Valley giants operate with impunity while claiming the law does not apply to their pursuit of market dominance.