AIPolicyTechOpenAI and Microsoft knew they were starting a \u2018doom loop\u2019 for the webThe companies knew they were driving us toward Google Zero, and did it anyway. The companies knew they were driving us toward Google Zero, and did it anyway. by Terrence O’BrienSep 18, 2026, 9:07 PM UTCShareGiftImage: Cath Virginia \/ The Verge, Getty ImagesTerrence O’Brien is the Verge\u2019s weekend editor. He\u2019s covered the tech industry for over 18 years and knows a thing or two about synths.Recently unsealed court documents in the New York Times\u2019 case against OpenAI and Microsoft are pretty damning. The companies\u2019 own documentation warned that it was starting a \u201cdoom loop\u201d that would damage the web, characterized its scraping of data to train its models as the \u201clargest theft of labor in human history,\u201d and that it made a \u201ccomplete mockery of the idea of fair use.\u201dMany of the most eye-catching quotes from the document come from Microsoft\u2019s Director of Applied Science, Brent Hecht.<\/p>\n
Though, the company has tried to distance itself from Hecht\u2019s assertions. Microsoft spokesperson Alex Haurek told The Verge that \u201cThese comments reflect one employee\u2019s individual perspective, are not a legal analysis, and do not represent the company\u2019s views.\u201dIn a separate court filing, Jordan Usdan, GM for Data Strategy and Ops at Microsoft AI, characterized Hecht\u2019s role as adversarial. He said that Hecht \u201cholds divergent, academic, and forward-looking views about how data ecosystems for AI should operate and is employed at Microsoft to bring asymmetrical, futuristic, and academic points of view \u2026 nor is he someone who speaks for Microsoft specifically as to his theoretical views on AI\u2019s potential effect on content creators.\u201dBut whether or not Microsoft wants to own these comments, it\u2019s clear that this came true. Google Zero is real!<\/p>\n
AI is eating the web!There are plenty more wild statements in NYT\u2019s filing from a variety of figures, including Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, and other OpenAI employees. Here are some highlights from the 92 page document.\u201cAn astonishing theft\u201dThe introduction quotes Hecht and OpenAI\u2019s Head of ChatGPT (presumably Nick Turley) in a way that seems to show the companies knew they posed an \u201cexistential threat\u201d to publishers like the New York Times. Hecht calls ChatGPT and Copilot\u2019s harvesting of data the \u201clargest theft of labor in human history\u201d and says that Microsoft\u2019s defense makes a \u201ccomplete mockery of the idea of \u2018fair use.\u2019\u201dIt\u2019s a \u201cdoom loop\u201dSatya Nadella admits that chatbots have basically replaced search and removed the need to go straight to the source for info. But perhaps more damning is an internal Microsoft document that says, \u201cOur AI content strategy has started a \u2018doom loop\u2019 that will hurt the performance of our models and the entire web at the same time: It is highly unusual that an end-product threatens the economic foundations of its essential suppliers, but that is the situation we have created for our LLM business with respect to its \u2018content supply chain.\u2019\u201dThat\u2019s not even a real numberDon\u2019t be fooled by OpenAI or Microsoft\u2019s claims of altruistic intent.<\/p>\n
OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman is more interested in the \u201cgazillions\u201d of dollars it he could potentially make through commercial AI.Paywall shmaywallDespite Nadella later being quoted as saying, \u201canything that is paywalled should be licensed,\u201d An OpenAI representative admitted that he was \u201cunaware\u201d of any effort to detect or remove paywalled content from training data.\u201cInsanely good at regurgitation\u201dInternally, it seems that OpenAI was well aware of ChatGPT\u2019s tendency to simply reproduce copyrighted material \u201cverbatim.\u201d Even though it acknowledged that the \u201cprevention of memorization\u201d was important to \u201cminimize copyright violations,\u201d employees admitted that GPT-4 \u201cmemorized a ton of data and therefore will be insanely good at regurgitation.\u201dThe filing then goes on to cite several examples of ChatGPT outputting long strings of copy straight from articles in the Times, Mercury News, The Denver Post, LifeHacker, and Eurogamer in response to queries.\u201c\u2018Hoovering up\u2019 all their work\u201dMicrosoft knew how its wholesale scraping of the internet would be perceived and admitted that \u201calmost no one intended for they [sic] content they created to be used in this fashion, nor are they compensated for its use.\u201dA \u201csubstitute for the labor of people\u201dOpenAI Policy Director Jack Clark saw the writing on the wall, saying that it was \u201ccreating systems that substitute for the labor of the people that define the \u2018culture\u2019 of society.\u201d Internal documents described ChatGPT as \u201cthe modern newsstand.\u201d OpenAI\u2019s Nick Turley is later quoted as saying that once you get an answer from its chatbot, there is \u201cno good reason to click\u201d on a link to the source.Destroying their own supply chainMicrosoft is quoted as admitting that \u201cLLMs are a product that destroys its own supply chain\u201d because it\u2019s a substitute for its own training data in many cases.OpenAI knows its killing referral trafficOpenAI\u2019s own media and economic experts attributed the drop in referral traffic for sites like the Times directly to AI summaries like Google\u2019s AI Overviews. They\u2019ve speculated that search referrals may be down as much as 60 percent.Microsoft spokesperson Haurek cautioned that \u201cSatya\u2019s testimony and Microsoft\u2019s position in this case are perfectly consistent. He spoke to broad principles and changes underway in how people find and consume information. Those observations should not be confused with conclusions about copyright questions before the Court, which Microsoft addresses in its filings.\u201dBut it seems pretty clear based on this newly unsealed document that both Microsoft and OpenAI knew they were going to irreparably harm the publishing industry, the \u201cmillions of people\u201d it employs, and, by extension, damage their own product, but carried forward anyway in pursuit of \u201cgazillions\u201d of dollars \u2014 doom loop be damned.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Terrence O’BrienAIGoogleLawMicrosoftOpenAIPolicyTechMost PopularThe Apple Watch Series 12 is the start of a new wearable eraThe 2.5-hour AI-generated Odyssey movie is 2.5 hours too longThe iPhone 18 Pro\u2019s big camera update is all about the small gainsVideoInside the suddenly explosive world of AI safetyYour robotaxi might be a narcAdvertiser Content FromThis is the title for the native ad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AIPolicyTechOpenAI and Microsoft knew they were starting a \u2018doom loop\u2019 for the webThe companies knew they were driving us toward Google Zero, and did it anyway. The companies knew they were driving us toward Google\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.tcjhomeaccents.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}