Authors Guild summary of newly unsealed filings in Authors Guild v. OpenAI/Microsoft: internal messages on LibGen, fear of Hacker News “optics,” Project Clear deletions, and executives’ awareness that models would replace writers.
Unsealed Briefs in Authors’ Case v. Microsoft/OpenAI: Top Execs Knew Their Mass Book Piracy Was Illegal And Would Put Authors Out of Work
The Authors Guild — September 21, 2026
Explosive new documents released in Authors Guild v. OpenAI — the major book authors’ ongoing lawsuit alleging OpenAI and Microsoft illegally trained their products on copyrighted books — show that executives and employees at both companies intentionally broke the law and expressed disdain for human authorship.
Plaintiffs include The Authors Guild and writers including David Baldacci, Taylor Branch, Michael Connelly, Sylvia Day, Jonathan Franzen, John Grisham, George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult, and others. Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger: filings reveal “repeated, intentional decisions to steal books rather than pay for them with full knowledge that their products will destroy the careers of authors.”
Highlights from the unsealed materials
OpenAI and Microsoft knew systems would replace writers. OpenAI Policy Director Jack Clark (May 2020): work on AI and creativity would “make people unemployed,” and artists’ concerns would “likely [be] ignore[d].”
“Autocompleting” other people’s work. An OpenAI hire described a research mission to have GPT write the last two books of A Song of Ice and Fire.
“Acceptable economic disruption.” Complaints that datasets were stolen were dismissed; the world would see “the death of the reader” as “machines creat[ed] slop for more machines.”
Microsoft knew about LibGen early. Altman and Amodei presented GPT-3 to Bill Gates in April 2019 and disclosed LibGen use to Gates and Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, among others.
Optics over law. Dario Amodei called LibGen “a bit sketchier”; Sam McCandlish worried about “openai uses copyrighted data from sketchy russian website” showing up on Hacker News.
“Project Clear.” In summer 2022 OpenAI moved to delete LibGen files and “excise LibGen from our systems and storage” amid news attention.
Quotes are drawn from Class Plaintiffs’ Memorandum of Law in Support of Motion for Partial Summary Judgment (Docket 1982) and Corrected Rule 56.1 Statement (Docket 1987). The case is part of multidistrict litigation in Manhattan; a hearing is expected in early 2027.