OpenAI and Microsoft knew they were starting a ‘doom loop’ for the web — SkimNews
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- OpenAI and Microsoft internal documents unsealed in the NYT copyright case warned the AI content strategy had started a "doom loop" hurting models and the entire web, with one Microsoft document stating "almost no one intended for their content to be used in this fashion."
- Microsoft Director of Applied Science Brent Hecht called ChatGPT and Copilot's data harvesting "the largest theft of labor in human history" and Microsoft's defense a "complete mockery" of fair use; Microsoft later distanced itself, calling Hecht's comments one employee's "individual perspective."
- Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella admitted chatbots have replaced search and removed the need to visit source sites, while an internal Microsoft document stated LLMs are "a product that destroys its own supply chain."
- OpenAI's internal documents acknowledged GPT-4 "memorized a ton of data" making it "insanely good at regurgitation," with the filing citing ChatGPT outputting verbatim passages from the NYT, Mercury News, Denver Post, LifeHacker, and Eurogamer.
- OpenAI Head of ChatGPT Nick Turley said users have "no good reason to click" on a source link after receiving a chatbot answer; an OpenAI representative separately admitted being "unaware" of any effort to detect paywalled content in training data.
- OpenAI's media experts attributed referral traffic drops of as much as 60 percent to AI summaries like Google's AI Overviews, with Policy Director Jack Clark saying the company was "creating systems that substitute for the labor of the people that define the 'culture' of society."
Why it matters: Publishers suing OpenAI and Microsoft gain damaging internal admissions — executives privately calling their work a "doom loop," the "largest theft of labor," and a product that "destroys its own supply chain" — to argue the companies knowingly drove publishers toward economic ruin in pursuit of "gazillions" in commercial AI revenue.
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