Microsoft says virtually nobody was grabbing NYT articles through its chatbot
The Verge·1 min read
As part of the lawsuit’s discovery, Microsoft provided 8.2 million Copilot chat logs to an expert hired by news publishers. The logs, it claims, were specifically chosen “because they hit on keywords implicating use of News Plaintiffs’ websites, and therefore the most likely to contain News Plaintiffs’ works.” It says the resulting analysis shows that 59,545 of these contained at least 16 words in common with news content used to ground the AI model. An expert for the Center for Investigative Reporting found 51 instances of “substantial overlap” with CIR work in the dataset, Microsoft says. Similarly, an expert in the authors’ suit found that the 8.2 million conversations with Copilot only had 24 responses that contained at least 30 matching words. Only 10 of the 212 books evaluated had any matches, Microsoft claims. The Times, CIR, and Authors Guild did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
