NYT Alleges Microsoft, OpenAI Knew Using News Content Was Theft
A 92-page public version of the News Plaintiffs’ summary judgment brief, filed on 17 September 2026, quotes Microsoft’s Director of Applied Science Brent Hecht on “an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions”. In full, the sentence forecasts how millions of people would see AI training. We read the brief and Microsoft’s own memorandum: the five stages of copying alleged, the datasets and counts, the “horse trading” between Microsoft and OpenAI, Copilot click-through drops of 83 to 93 per cent, the Bloom filter behind the “accidental cover up” line, and Microsoft’s 8.2-million-log defence.