Recently unsealed court documents in the New York Times’ ongoing copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, which Microsoft was dragged into as OpenAI’s largest shareholder, reveal that top Microsoft figures including CEO Satya Nadella admitted their AI models are basically stealing content from media companies while providing virtually nothing in return, creating a “doom loop” that will swallow the web. In one document written by Microsoft director of applied science Brent Hecht, the company states its AI content strategy has started a “doom loop” that will hurt the performance of its models and the entire web at the same time, calling it “highly unusual that an end-product threatens the economic foundations of its essential suppliers.” Nadella said conversing with AI chatbots “has substituted… giving you the information right there on the website on the AI platform versus needing to go to the underlying source.” OpenAI allegedly resorted to finding tricks to get around paywalls without detection; when one employee told OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman about a “hack to get around” the NYT’s paywall, Brockman responded: “ah nice.”