Private remarks by executives at OpenAI and Microsoft threaten to undercut the companies' fair-use defense in a high-stakes copyright lawsuit, according to newly public court filings from the New York Times and eight other news organizations. The quotes, unsealed September 17 in Manhattan federal court, show senior leaders describing their AI products as substitutes for journalism - claims the publishers say "eviscerate" the argument that training on millions of articles without permission is legally protected.
What the executives said under oath
Nick Turley, OpenAI's head of ChatGPT, told the court that publishers face an "existential threat" from AI products that are "largely substitutive" and "will get more and more substitutive as they get better." OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman wrote in internal communications that large language models are "particularly good at predicting text of news articles" and "very good at any news task." When told employees had found a "hack" to bypass the New York Times paywall, Brockman responded "ah nice."
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella agreed during discovery that conversing with chatbots "has substituted … giving you the information right there on the website on the AI platform versus needing to go to the underlying source." A Microsoft spokesperson said Nadella's testimony and the company's legal position are "perfectly consistent," adding that he "spoke to broad principles and changes underway in how people find and consume information."
The filing also quotes Brent Hecht, Microsoft's director of applied science, who said "millions of people" would consider AI companies "'hoovering up' all their work" to be "an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions." Microsoft distanced itself from the remark, calling it "one employee's individual perspective" that does "not represent the company's views."
The legal stakes
OpenAI and Microsoft have argued that training AI on copyrighted newspaper articles qualifies as fair use because the process transforms the material into new content and does not compete with or replace the original journalism. The case, first filed in 2023, is one of dozens brought by copyright holders against technology companies over AI training practices. The Trump administration signaled support for the AI industry on September 1, telling US District Judge Sidney Stein that AI training is "extraordinarily" transformative.
Steven Lieberman, an attorney for the New York Daily News and seven other newspapers in the consolidated case, said the newly revealed evidence "shows that OpenAI and Microsoft knew that what they were doing was wrong." The plaintiffs also include Ziff Davis publications, the Intercept, and the Center for Investigative Reporting.
Why this matters for legal, PR, and editorial professionals
The gap between a company's public legal position and what its executives say in internal communications or under oath is a recurring pressure point in litigation. For communications and legal teams, the unsealed quotes are a case study in how discovery can surface language that contradicts carefully crafted fair-use arguments. PR professionals drafting public statements about AI training should anticipate that internal Slack messages, emails, and deposition testimony may eventually become public exhibits. Editorial and creative workers watching this case will see a direct line between how AI companies talk about their products internally and whether courts view those products as substitutes for human-created work - a finding that could reshape licensing and compensation norms across the industry.
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