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Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Eric Schmidt did say, “But if nobody uses your product, it doesn’t matter that you stole all the content.” The sentence, reported by The Verge on August 15, 2024, was part of a hypothetical example about using a large language model to build a fast TikTok competitor—not a court ruling or a specific legal analysis of AI training. Schmidt later said, “I was not arguing that you should illegally steal everybody’s music.”
What Eric Schmidt was describing
At a Stanford discussion on AI and geopolitics, Schmidt began with a hypothetical: “If TikTok is banned,” students could use an LLM to create a rival service, copy the product quickly, attract users and use popular music. Fortune’s report says he imagined the founders hiring lawyers afterward to “go clean the mess up.”
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The provocative line came later in that example: “But if nobody uses your product, it doesn’t matter that you stole all the content.” In context, “content” referred to material used by the hypothetical social-video competitor. The available wording comes from news reports because the Stanford event video was subsequently removed from the university’s YouTube channel after Schmidt asked for it to be taken down.
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The Verge reported Schmidt subsequently clarified: “I was not arguing that you should illegally steal everybody’s music.” When interviewer Erik Brynjolfsson noted that Schmidt was on camera, Schmidt replied, “Yeah, that’s right. But you see my point. In other words, Silicon Valley will run these tests and clean up the mess. And that’s typically how those things are done.”
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That qualification narrows the claim but does not erase the underlying argument: launch a product experiment first and deal with legal or rights problems later if the experiment succeeds.
What the remark does—and does not—say about AI companies
| Question | What the reports establish | What they do not establish |
|---|---|---|
| What product was discussed? | A hypothetical LLM-assisted TikTok competitor, following a possible TikTok ban. | A documented plan by a named AI company to copy TikTok or its music. |
| What did “steal all the content” mean? | Schmidt used the phrase while describing the competitor’s rapid launch and later cleanup. | A legal definition of copyright infringement or a finding that any company stole content. |
| Was this advice about model training? | The example involved an LLM helping build a product. | A specific legal conclusion about whether training AI models on copyrighted works is lawful. |
| Was liability established? | No. The reports quote a discussion and describe lawsuits as allegations. | A court judgment that OpenAI, Microsoft or another company was liable. |
For that reason, the headline’s broad reference to “AI companies” is editorial framing. The quoted reports connect Schmidt’s comments to an LLM-built application, but they do not show that he was announcing a policy for AI-model developers or speaking for Google, OpenAI or any other company.
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How the copyright lawsuits fit the story
Fortune also situated the comments amid copyright litigation. It reported that The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023, alleging that the companies infringed copyright and used millions of Times articles in training. Fortune reported that eight newspaper publishers filed another suit in April 2024, alleging use of copyrighted articles without permission or payment.
Those descriptions are allegations made in lawsuits, not findings that the defendants violated copyright. The August 2024 reporting cited here does not establish the final outcomes of those cases. Nor does mentioning the suits prove anything about AI training as a whole.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why the wording attracted attention
“Clean up the mess” reverses the usual risk order
Most product advice treats permissions, licensing and compliance as prerequisites. Schmidt’s example put experimentation first: test whether a service can gain users, then pay for lawyers and resolve the rights problems if it works. That approach makes the sentence sound like a defense of copying even though he later rejected illegal music theft as the advice he intended.
The quote is stronger than the evidence about its scope
The reports support a provocative statement in a hypothetical conversation. They do not support saying that Schmidt endorsed taking every kind of copyrighted material, that he authorized infringement, or that he made a determination about the legality of AI training. Those broader claims go beyond what was reported.
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What readers can accurately take away
- Schmidt used the exact phrase “if nobody uses your product, it doesn’t matter that you stole all the content” while discussing an imagined LLM-built TikTok rival.
- He later said he was not arguing that people should illegally take everybody’s music.
- He still defended the Silicon Valley pattern of running tests and “clean[ing] up the mess” afterward.
- The event video was reported taken down, so the quotations should be attributed to The Verge or Fortune’s accounts rather than presented as an independently checked transcript.
- The related newspaper copyright cases were reported allegations in 2024, not proof that a court had found AI companies liable.
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