Everything on the Internet Can Be Used for Free to Train AI Models: Microsoft’s AI Division CEO

The CEO of Microsoft’s new artificial intelligence (AI) division recently spoke with CNBC, stating that anything published on the internet essentially becomes ‘freeware.’ This means it can be copied and used to train AI models. When asked if AI companies have effectively stolen the world’s intellectual property, Mustafa Suleyman responded by explaining that content on the open web has been considered fair use since the 1990s. He said, “Anyone can copy it, recreate with it, reproduce with it. That has been freeware, if you like. That’s been the understanding.”

Microsoft Aligns with AI Companies Against Publishers & News Organizations

Suleyman further clarified that all online content can be freely used to train AI models unless the publisher or a news organization explicitly requests Google not to scrape or crawl their content for purposes other than indexing. This statement makes Microsoft’s position clear on using internet content for AI training.

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By taking this stance, Microsoft has aligned itself with other AI companies like Perplexity, Google, and OpenAI, who believe it is acceptable to use web content for training AI models without compensating the original creators.

Most companies in the generative AI field, such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Copilot, are currently facing controversies over scraping copyrighted data to train their AI models. Additionally, several organizations and publications, including Forbes, the New York Times, and the Recording Industry Association of America, have filed lawsuits against these companies for using their content without permission.