The New York Times and several other media companies have filed a joint summary judgment brief in US District Court in New York. The filing accuses OpenAI and Microsoft of systematically bypassing paywalls, violating license terms for training data, and deploying filters to suppress evidence after the lawsuits were filed.
Microsoft's director of applied science, Brent Hecht, called the practice 'an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions' and possibly the 'largest theft of labor in human history.' He also wrote that a successful fair use defense would arguably 'make a complete mockery of the idea of 'fair use.''
The US Copyright Office concluded in May 2025 that fair use cannot apply broadly given the sheer scale at which AI companies copy data. The official who oversaw the report was later fired by the Trump administration.
OpenAI's head of ChatGPT, Nick Turley, wrote that publishers face an 'existential threat,' according to the brief. He said the products 'are largely substitutive, period' and would increasingly replace publishers' offerings 'as they get better.'
An internal Microsoft document describes a self-reinforcing cycle it calls a 'doom loop.' The brief includes numerous examples of problematic outputs, with ChatGPT reproducing exact copies and summaries of NYT articles on request, including articles behind a paywall.
The plaintiffs argue that the fair use defense fails on all four statutory factors. They say the use is substitutive and commercial rather than transformative, while the articles are expressive works at the core of copyright protection. The defendants also copied entire works, even though their own experts admitted that no single work was necessary.
Source: thedecoder
