Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says content on the open web is “freeware” that anyone can copy or use to reproduce, due to the fair use “social contract”

Microsoft's CEO of AI said that content on the open web can be copied and used to create new content.

Windows Central 2024-06-29 Sean Endicott

Context & Ripple Effects

The remarks establish a permissive view of public web material at a time when Microsoft was positioning OpenAI tools for integration across its products and for other businesses to build on. Subsequent coverage makes clear that content access matters more as Microsoft seeks greater AI-model self-sufficiency.

This is therefore not just a comment on copying: it frames the assumed input supply for a company expanding its own model capabilities after revising its OpenAI arrangement.

First-order effects

Microsoft AI publicly signals that it views openly available web content as usable material for generating new outputs under its reading of fair use.
Publishers and creators receive a clearer indication that Microsoft may treat public availability as permission absent more explicit technical or contractual limits.

Second-order effects

The stance increases pressure on publishers to tighten crawler controls, licensing terms, and other mechanisms that distinguish visibility to users from reuse by AI systems.
As Microsoft builds more proprietary models, the practical importance of its training-data posture rises alongside its plans for in-house voice, image, and text models.

Third-order effects

If major AI developers continue to equate open publication with model-use permission, the web’s default economics could shift toward negotiated access, machine-readable restrictions, and content designed for controlled distribution.
The central fault line will be whether public accessibility alone establishes a durable permission boundary; that question is likely to shape how AI developers, publishers, and policymakers define a governable corpus.

The trend: AI companies are moving from treating the open web as an implicit training commons toward a contested market for permissioned, controllable content inputs.

Discussion

@dmoren Dan Moren on threads
Ah yes, I remember when I signed that “social contract” where I publish work that you can just take and reuse in any way you like without you having to compensate me in anyway. It was back when I was young and foolish and didn't have a “social lawyer” to explain to me the “socia…
@tnlnyc Tristan Louis on threads
Following the logic set by the head of AI at Microsoft: https://www.windowscentral.com/ ... I'm going to start using Microsoft office without paying for it because it's just used in the creation of the my material, not part of what I created. …
@matthewkeys@mastodon.social Matthew Keys on mastodon
Every company suing OpenAI for copyright infringement is going to seize on Mustafa Suleyman's words... https://www.theverge.com/...
@tsarnick @tsarnick on x
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman: the social contract for content that is on the open web is that it's “freeware” for training AI models [video]
@iowahawkblog David Burge on x
Just as the mysterious satire site foretold [image]
@bitandbang Tierney Cyren on x
Microsoft's absolute obsession with AI beginning to unravel some of the goodwill they've built up absolute dipshit take
@kortizart Karla Ortiz on x
The eventual fall of the generative AI sector will be even more spectacular, because people in extremely high positions of power are completely delusional to how the world and actual laws works. Just because it's on the internet does not mean it's yours to take and profit from!
@seldo Laurie Voss on x
Eventually the model makers are going to realize that they have to pay royalties for every byte of training data they use.
@garymarcus Gary Marcus on x
I honestly don't know if I can keep using Microsoft products when their AI CEO says stuff like this. Anyone want to join in a boycott? Cc @Rahll First they came for the artists and the writers, and then the voiceover actors, now it's the musicians. Soon it will be everyone.
@joshuatopolsky Joshua Topolsky on x
Only someone utterly divorced from creation and completely insulated in a bubble of entitlement would have such a distorted view of other people's work like this
@garymarcus Gary Marcus on x
Microsoft, 2019: When your technology changes the world, you bear a responsibility to help address the world you have helped create Microsoft, 2024: You wrote that/made that/sang that? It's ours!!! [image]
@carnage4life Dare Obasanjo on x
I can only assume Microsoft has laid off all its lawyers. [image]
@denmanrooke Denman Rooke on x
My art on my website is only “freeware” in that you can look at it and download it, admire it. It is not “freeware” in the case that you can take it along with other artists' work and repackage to sell and make money from. That is called stealing.
@seldo Laurie Voss on x
lol no https://www.windowscentral.com/ ... [image]
@mustafasuleyman Mustafa Suleyman on x
Great chatting to @andrewrsorkin @aspenideas yesterday (even if we don't always agree on the framing of the question!) We covered a phenomenal amount in a short space of time: our present exponential moment, regulation, geopolitics, energy, creativity, education, all the immense
@cnbc @cnbc on x
“We have to stop framing everything as an adversarial race,” Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says about competition between the tech giant and OpenAI. https://www.cnbc.com/... NBCUniversal News Group is the media partner of the Aspen Ideas Festival. [video]
@thurrott Paul Thurrott on x
“Microsoft's AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says content on the open web is ‘freeware’ that anyone can copy or use to reproduce, due to the fair use ‘social contract’” And I say you're a f#$%ing thief with no sense of your legal or ethical obligations.
@sonnybunch Sonny Bunch on x
this is ... not what fair use is or has been understood to mean, like, at all
@toadsanime Ryan T. Brown on x
Good news, everyone! Everything Microsoft has ever made that's online is now freeware, according to its AI CEO.
@c418 Daniel on x
Fascinating. When I was a kid, people like that were mad, absolutely livid that I was pirating software, and now these fucks are riding the high seas themselves
@datnofact @datnofact on x
Actual incredible thing for a trillion dollar company to come out and say. Should people treat Windows as freeware then?
@edzitron Ed Zitron on x
Not only the wrong definition of fair use and freeware but also absolutely god damn sucks
@ianfayart @ianfayart on x
This mother fucker. Piracy is “bad” when individuals take from corporations, but when corps steal from individuals to horde infinite wealth and waste our resources, it's noble and good. My big bag of hammers grows restless.
@baekdal Thomas Baekdal on x
Fuck you! ... no seriously. Not only is this 100% not true. But Microsoft's own terms of use states: “Extracting Data. Unless explicitly permitted, you may not use web scraping, web harvesting, or web data extraction methods to extract data from the AI services.”
@gabbistubbs Gabbi Stubbs on x
This is: 1. False. Online content is protected by copyright 2. Gaslighting - to preemptively influence perception & gain support to use other's content for their profit 3. An admission - scraping without consent 4. A disclosure - no diligence on data quality fuelling their LLMs
@yo_segal Yoav Segal on x
This is all gibberish. If you've ever worked with digital imagery (stock, google listed, etc) you'll know that image rights are incredibly clear, specific and binding. What he's peddling is a totally false narrative to justify theft and rights infringement on an industrial scale.
@jzellis Josh Ellis on x
Cool, Windows is on the open web along with tons of serial numbers, I'm glad I can install it for free, isn't that awesome? Hey, everybody, you don't have to pay for Windows licenses anymore!
@ginasue Prof Gina Neff on x
This is literally insane. And wrong!
@paperghost Chris Boyd on x
does @mustafasuleyman not understand how copyright works because everything you find on the “open web” is not in fact freeware for training AI models, and not everything you find is fair use, as years of corporations like microsoft have spent yelling at people for piracy tells us
@tomwarren Tom Warren on x
it's amazing that so many tech execs have so little regard for creators and journalists. I wonder if Microsoft would be fine if we all treated Windows as freeware?
@rahll Reid Southen on x
This is blatant lying and gaslighting, merely putting something on the web does not make it freeware, that's absolutely insane. @FTC needs to investigate Microsoft before this gets even more out of hand.
@ednewtonrex Ed Newton-Rex on x
Microsoft AI CEO says the social contract of content on the open web “is fair use”, “anyone can copy it”, it's “freeware”. This is categorically false. Content released online is still protected by copyright. You can't copy it for any purpose you like simply because it's on the
@agstrait Andrew Strait on x
There was never a social contract to mass collect people's personal data and mass infringe copyrighted work.
@mountain_ghosts @mountain_ghosts on x
quick question what would happen to me if I applied this logic to anything microsoft publishes https://x.com/...
@clancynewyork Eileen Clancy on x
A British accent isn't a license to steal. “Fair use” is restricted even for libraries. Xeroxing a recipe for your cousin is a harmless use. Enterprise-scale thievery of creative work isn't. There's no social contract because AI is hidden. The public can't know enough to consent.
@chronotope Aram Zucker-Scharff on x
Windows is on the web, digitally distributed code content. I guess it's officially freeware now. Heads up that Microsoft apparently says it's ok [image]
r/technology r on reddit
Ever put content on the web? Microsoft says that it's okay for them to steal it because it's ‘freeware.’
r/law r on reddit
Microsoft's AI boss thinks it's perfectly OK to steal content if it's on the open web - “I think that with respect to content that's already on the open web …

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