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OpenAI's own executives call ChatGPT substitutive of the journalism it trained on

Discovery quotes unsealed on Thursday have Nick Turley, Greg Brockman and Satya Nadella describing the products as substitutes, while OpenAI and Microsoft have told a Manhattan court that their training does not replace journalism.

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What happened

  • Filings unsealed on Thursday in the Manhattan copyright case show OpenAI and Microsoft executives privately describing their AI products as substitutes for journalism, according to the news outlets suing them.
  • Nadella agreed under oath that conversing with chatbots has substituted for needing to go to the underlying source of the information.
  • The Trump administration backed the AI companies on September 1, telling Judge Sidney Stein that training is "extraordinarily" transformative, and the defendants filed their own fair-use arguments on September 4.

Why it matters

  • What it limits constraint The defense was pleaded on two grounds, transformation and non-substitution, and the unsealed testimony puts the defendants' own witnesses against the second one, leaving transformation to carry more weight before Stein.
  • What doesn't add up contradiction Microsoft treats Nadella's sentence as commentary on how people find information; the newspapers treat it as an admission of market harm, and how Stein reads it decides what the sentence costs.
  • Who's exposed exposure The paywall-hack exchange puts conduct during data collection into the record. That attack does not depend on what the model outputs.
  • What it sets up precedent With dozens of copyright suits pending on the same transformation question, a substitution finding here becomes the citation the next set of plaintiffs reaches for.

The defense as pleaded has two parts. OpenAI and Microsoft told the Manhattan federal court that training on millions of newspaper articles transforms the copyrighted material into new content, and that the result does not compete with or replace the news organizations' journalism [10]. The unsealed quotes go at the second part. The Trump administration's brief goes to the first: it told US District Judge Sidney Stein on September 1 that AI training is "extraordinarily" transformative [16].

Turley was describing what the product does to publishers. The outlets quote OpenAI's head of ChatGPT saying they face an "existential threat" from products that are "largely substitutive" and "will get more and more substitutive as they get better" [3]. Brockman was describing capability at the specific task. The filing quotes him writing that large language models are "particularly good at predicting text of news articles," "excellent at news," and "very good at any news task" [4].

Microsoft's answer is about characterisation. "Satya's testimony and Microsoft's position in this case are perfectly consistent," a spokesperson said, adding that "He spoke to broad principles and changes underway in how people find and consume information" [13]. The same filing quotes Microsoft's director of applied science, Brent Hecht, saying "millions of people" would consider AI companies "'hoovering up' all their work" to be "an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions" [1]. Microsoft said those comments "reflect one employee's individual perspective, are not a legal analysis, and do not represent the company's views" [2].

One quote sits on a different axis from output substitution. Brockman responded "ah nice" when he was told that OpenAI employees had discovered a "hack" to get around the New York Times' paywall, according to the outlets' filing [6]. That goes to how the material was obtained.

Steven Lieberman represents eight newspapers in the case, the New York Daily News and seven others [15][18]. "The evidence revealed here for the first time shows that OpenAI and Microsoft knew that what they were doing was wrong," he said in a statement [15]. The suit was first filed in 2023, and the plaintiff publications include Ziff Davis titles, the Intercept and the Center for Investigative Reporting [9]. OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing, and a New York Times spokesperson declined to comment [17].

For anyone building on frontier models, the question is what would have to be true for this record to reach a supply contract. The report covers two defendants and one defense; contract terms are not disclosed [19]. Dozens of other copyright complaints are pending against tech companies, and according to the report those cases will likely turn on the same transformation question [12]. The event that would move provenance from a legal argument into a procurement clause is a holding that substitution defeats fair use for news training data. Stein has the parties' arguments in filings dated September 4 [11].

What to watch

  • Whether Stein's ruling treats transformation and market substitution as separable questions, or lets one carry the other.
  • Whether plaintiffs in the dozens of other pending complaints move to unseal comparable discovery from their defendants.
  • Whether OpenAI issues a substantive response to the filing after not immediately responding to requests for comment.

Clarity's read

What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.

Reality

Evidence72
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+20
Incentives78
Confidence68

Perspective Coverage

5 publishers
Builder
Builder 33%
Operator
Operator 38%
Investor
Investor 29%
Why these scores

Claim ledger

Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.

  1. [1]

    The filing quoted Microsoft's director of applied science, Brent Hecht, as saying that "millions of people" would consider AI companies "'hoovering up' all their work" to be "an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions."

    Reported SupportedView cited source
  2. [2]

    The Microsoft spokesperson said Hecht's comments "reflect one employee's individual perspective, are not a legal analysis, and do not represent the company's views."

    Reported SupportedView cited source
  3. [3]

    The outlets quoted OpenAI's head of ChatGPT, Nick Turley, as saying that publishers face an "existential threat" from their products, which are "largely substitutive" and "will get more and more substitutive as they get better."

    Reported Supported Source: News outlets' filing, quoting Nick TurleyView cited source
  4. [4]

    According to the outlets' Thursday filing, Brockman wrote that large language models are "particularly good at predicting text of news articles," "excellent at news," and "very good at any news task."

    Reported SupportedView cited source
  5. [5]

    Court filings made public on Thursday show that OpenAI and Microsoft executives privately described their AI products as substitutes for journalism, according to the New York Times and other news outlets, which say the filings gut the companies' fair-use defense in a Manhattan federal copyright case.

    Reported Supported Source: Court filings as reported by economictimes.indiatimes.comView cited source
  6. [6]

    According to the outlets' filing, Brockman responded "ah nice" when he was told that OpenAI employees had discovered a "hack" to get around the New York Times' paywall.

    Reported SupportedView cited source
  7. [7]

    Previously redacted portions of the filing made public on Thursday revealed discovery quotes from OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and others that the news organizations say "eviscerate" the companies' fair-use defense to the infringement claims.

    Reported SupportedView cited source
  8. [8]

    Nadella agreed under oath 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."

    Reported SupportedView cited source
  9. [9]

    The lawsuit, first filed in 2023, accuses OpenAI and Microsoft of using millions of articles without permission to train ChatGPT from news sources that also include Ziff Davis publications, the Intercept and the Center for Investigative Reporting.

    Reported SupportedView cited source
  10. [10]

    OpenAI and Microsoft have argued in the Manhattan federal court case that their AI training on millions of newspaper articles is protected as fair use because it transforms copyrighted material into new content and does not compete with or replace the news organizations' journalism.

    Reported SupportedView cited source
  11. [11]

    The question of whether AI systems make fair use of copyrighted material was at the center of arguments OpenAI and Microsoft made to Judge Sidney Stein in September 4 court filings.

    Reported SupportedView cited source
  12. [12]

    Dozens of other complaints have been brought by copyright owners against tech companies over the use of their material to train AI systems, and the cases will likely turn on whether AI systems make fair use of copyrighted material by using it to create transformative new content.

    Reported SupportedView cited source
  13. [13]

    A Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement on Thursday: "Satya's testimony and Microsoft's position in this case are perfectly consistent. He spoke to broad principles and changes underway in how people find and consume information."

    Reported Supported Source: Microsoft spokespersonView cited source
  14. [14]

    Microsoft said Nadella's comment did not undermine the company's defense in the copyright case, and that his observations should not be confused with conclusions about the copyright questions before the court.

    Reported SupportedView cited source
  15. [15]

    Steven Lieberman, an attorney for the New York Daily News and seven other newspapers involved in the case, said in a statement: "The evidence revealed here for the first time shows that OpenAI and Microsoft knew that what they were doing was wrong."

    Reported SupportedView cited source
  16. [16]

    The Trump administration supports the AI companies and told US District Judge Sidney Stein on September 1 that AI training is "extraordinarily" transformative.

    Reported SupportedView cited source
  17. [17]

    Spokespeople for OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing, and a New York Times spokesperson declined to comment.

    Reported SupportedView cited source
  18. [18]

    Lieberman's newspaper clients in the case number eight.

    Derived Supported
  19. [19]

    The reported filing concerns the fair-use defense of OpenAI and Microsoft; the report does not describe indemnities, licence terms or contracts for downstream customers building on the models.

    Derived Supported

Sources

5 independent publishers whose own reporting we read for this story.

  1. dev.to

    3 articles · September 19, 2026

    Microsoft Executive Labels AI Scraping 'Largest Theft of Labor in Human History', What It Means for the Future of Creative Work
  2. economictimes.indiatimes.com

    1 article · September 17, 2026

    OpenAI: OpenAI, Microsoft executives' quotes on AI training threaten copyright defense, news outlets argue - The Economic Times
  3. techspot.com

    1 article · September 18, 2026

    Microsoft exec says AI training might be the "largest labor theft in human history" | TechSpot
  4. the-decoder.com

    2 articles · September 18, 2026

    AI training built on fair use looks shaky when the companies' own people call it "astonishing theft"
  5. tomshardware.com

    1 article · September 18, 2026

    Microsoft director called AI scraping ‘the largest theft of labor in human history,’ while OpenAI head brands ChatGPT an ‘existential threat’ to publishers — revelations come from legal briefs filed in NYT lawsuit

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