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"how many of those shapes are rectangles?" "sounds like zero unless they are squares"

Adding "unless" to a statement makes it vacuous if the latter clause is weaker than the first clause. I find it hard to believe that a company willing to violate licenses would have scruples about lying about it.

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Not vacuous, but tautological. Which is different, because tautologies can actually be quite directly informative. Whereas vacuous truths tend to be oblique.

Also, “Microsoft is lying” is not a logically stronger statement, because they might be lying about something other than whether they distilled or trained on AI output.

Adding "unless" to a statement makes it vacuous if the latter clause is weaker than the first clause

I think that's the point. "How do I say they're lying without outright saying they're lying?"

It's a common rhetorical trick.

Or the speaker is just not in the mood to argue with someone whose response will be, "you trust anything Microsoft say?"

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