Signal Unsealed filings show OpenAI, Microsoft executives privately called AI training a 'theft' that could replace journalism

Summary

Newly unredacted court filings unsealed on September 17, 2026 in the New York Times' copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft revealed internal admissions from top executives. OpenAI's head of ChatGPT, Nick Turley, wrote internally that publishers faced an 'existential threat' from AI products that were already 'largely substitutive' and would become more so. Microsoft's Director of Applied Science, Brent Hecht, described the alleged copying as 'an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions' and possibly 'the largest theft of labor in human history.' The Times argues these internal statements undermine the companies' fair-use defense by showing they knew their products would compete with the journalism used to train them. Microsoft's own data reportedly shows its Copilot 'answer engine' cut click-through rates to the New York Times' domain by as much as 93% compared to traditional Bing search. Separately, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a brief in September 2026 supporting OpenAI's position that training AI models on copyrighted text does not generally constitute infringement, marking the first time the government has taken a position in AI training copyright litigation.