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Microsoft's Own Exec Called AI News Scraping the Biggest Theft in Human History. Turns Out They Knew.
Unsealed court documents from a lawsuit led by the New York Times reveal that senior Microsoft and OpenAI employees privately acknowledged that scraping news content for AI training was potentially unlawful and harmful. A Microsoft director described the practice as possibly "the largest theft of labor in human history" and a "mockery of fair use," while OpenAI's ChatGPT head warned that AI products posed an "existential threat" to news publishers by substituting for them. News organizations argue this internal evidence, combined with data showing significant drops in website traffic and instances of chatbots reproducing articles verbatim, undermines the companies' fair use defence and demonstrates they knowingly harmed the news industry.
The Bigger the AI Model, the Harder It Is to Blame It for Anything
MIT researchers found that as AI diffusion models grow larger and are trained on more data, it becomes increasingly difficult to attribute their outputs to specific training inputs — a phenomenon they call "attribution decay." Even removing specific images entirely from training data doesn't prevent large models from reproducing similar content or styles. The findings complicate AI regulation and copyright litigation, while also raising questions about fair use and whether large-model outputs could be considered novel, creative works in their own right.
News Corp Goes Full Scorched Earth on AI 'Kleptomaniacs'
News Corp CEO Robert Thomson used the company's latest results announcement to launch a scathing attack on AI companies that use its content without permission, calling them "crass kleptomaniacs" and specifically accusing browser maker Brave of illegally scraping and repurposing copyrighted material at scale. The company is pursuing a "woo and sue" strategy, maintaining paid content deals with OpenAI and Meta while taking legal action against those who use its content without authorisation. Despite the disputes, News Corp posted strong financial results, with full-year revenue up 7 percent to $9.03 billion, led by 12 percent growth in its Digital Real Estate Services segment.
Suno Data Breach Exposes 55 Million Users, Plus Some Awkward Scraping Receipts
AI music platform Suno suffered a significant data breach affecting over 55 million user accounts, exposing email addresses, phone numbers, and tens of thousands of Stripe payment records containing names, addresses, and partial credit card details. The individual claiming responsibility for the breach also released source code allegedly showing Suno scraping songs and lyrics from platforms like YouTube Music and Deezer to train its AI. The breach comes amid broader legal troubles for Suno, which is already facing a lawsuit from major record labels including Sony, UMG, and Warner over alleged unauthorised mass scraping of copyrighted music.
Suno Hits $5.4 Billion Valuation While Its Legal Fight With the Music Industry Grinds On
AI music startup Suno has raised $400 million at a $5.4 billion valuation — double its valuation from seven months ago — making it the highest-valued startup in the AI music space. The company boasts over two million subscribers and is on track for $300 million in annual revenue, with plans to grow its workforce by up to 70% by the end of the year. However, Suno continues to face legal challenges from major record labels Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, who allege the company used millions of copyrighted recordings to train its AI models, though Warner Music Group previously settled and signed a licensing deal with Suno in November 2025.