OpenAI and Microsoft knew they were starting a ‘doom loop’ for the web

Court documents from a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft reveal that the companies' own internal documentation warned about creating a 'doom loop' (a self-reinforcing cycle of damage) for the web by scraping data to train AI models. The documents characterize this data collection as unethical, calling it the 'largest theft of labor in human history' and criticizing it as violating fair use (the legal principle allowing limited use of copyrighted material without permission).