How much did Copilot affect The New York Times' traffic?

Microsoft's own data shows its Copilot answer engine caused click-through rates for The New York Times' domain to drop as much as 93% compared to traditional Bing search.

How much of the Times' content was allegedly copied?

The documents reveal that OpenAI's mid-training datasets alone contain more than 91,692 copies of works published by the NYT, Daily News, and Center for Investigative Reporting. A Common Crawl-derived dataset included more than 2 million documents from nytimes.com alone.

AI Regulation & PolicyAI Business & IndustryTechCrunch AISep 17, 2026Sep 18, 2026, 06:00 JST

Microsoft exec called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history'

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3 Key Points

What happened
Unredacted filings in The New York Times' lawsuit show Microsoft's Brent Hecht called AI scraping 'the largest theft of labor in human history,' while OpenAI's Nick Turley warned of an 'existential threat' to publishers.
Why it matters
The admissions suggest AI models directly substitute for news content rather than transform it, which cuts against OpenAI's 'fair use' defense requiring that use not harm the market for the original work.
What to watch
The quotes come from The Times' own brief, not the underlying exhibits, which remain sealed. Whether courts accept these characterizations as evidence, rather than context-stripped excerpts, is likely to shape the case.

WHO IT HITSThe filing lands hardest on news publishers and journalists whose content trained the models — Microsoft's own data shows Copilot cut NYT click-through rates by as much as 93% versus traditional Bing search. Legal teams at AI and media companies will be watching how judges weigh these admissions against the fair-use defense.

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How much did Copilot affect The New York Times' traffic?: Microsoft's own data shows its Copilot answer engine caused click-through rates for The New York Times' domain to drop as much as 93% compared to traditional Bing search.
How much of the Times' content was allegedly copied?: The documents reveal that OpenAI's mid-training datasets alone contain more than 91,692 copies of works published by the NYT, Daily News, and Center for Investigative Reporting. A Common Crawl-derived dataset included more than 2 million documents from nytimes.com alone.

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