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From the GPLv2 licensed code: https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-III-Arena/blob/master/c... copilot repeats it word for word almost, including comments, and adds an MIT like license up the top
This exact code is all over github, >1k hits https://github.com/search?q=%22i++%3D+%2A+%28+long+%2A+%29+%...
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Almost 2000 results for one of the comment lines. I'm not going to read through those or check the licenses, but I think it's safe to say that block of code exists in many GitHub code bases, and it's likely many of those have permissive licenses. Given how famous it is (for a block of code) it's not unexpected. https://github.com/search?q=%22evil+floating+point+bit+level... A question that popped into my head is: if…
if the machine sees the same exact block of code hundreds of times, does that suggest to it that it's more acceptable to regurgitate the entire thing verbatim? From a copyright standpoint, quite possibly. This is called the "Scènes à faire" doctrine. If there are some things that have to be there in a roughly standard form to do a standard job, that applies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sc%C3%A8nes_%C3%A0_faire
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This is the network working as designed. I mean, if you wrote an autocomplete system for written english and asked it to complete the sentence "O Romeo, Romeo" what would you expect to happen? You'd expect it to complete to "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" - a very famous quote. How else could you produce the single right output for that unique input, other than memorising and regurgitating?
> You'd expect it to complete to "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" - a very famous quote. What about completing it to "O Romeo, Romeo, brave Mercutio is dead", based on the context, as advertised?
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It looks like you're responding to the wrong comment. I don't recall alleging that Github is "building an engine to cynically exploit the IP rights of open source copyright holders for profit".
> I think only Github's lawyers would interpret what GP posted the way you did. Looks like weasel wording to make such an interpretation possible, So what are you suggesting here, except that Github is attempting a legal sleight-of-hand to hide real infringement? > while making customers believe that code is more or less synthesized in realtime. What are you suggesting here except that Github is (essentially) lying t…
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Google (and most of other big techs I guess?) also explicitly prohibit employees from use of stack overflow code snippets.
I tried Googling this and couldn't find it. I also don't want to believe it because it seems like the world suddenly turned into an apocalyptic hellscape with no place for developers like me. Do you have a source?
SO definitely comes up during copyright/IP training.
The basic idea is 'reading SO answers to learn how to solve a problem is fine, copying/transcribing the code is not'.
Google is quite paranoid re. copyright and licenses.
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Then why are you complaining? Unless something is new that warrants you getting mad about people getting mad at technology.
Not the parent, but people really like to get riled up on the same topics, over and over again, which quickly monopolizes and derails all conversion. Facebook bad, UIs suck, etc. We can now add to the list, "AI will never reduce demand for software engineering".
Copilot is definitely no replacement for anything except copying from Stack Overflow for juniors.
But in the long run, AI is us basically us creating our own replacement. As a species. We don't realize it yet. It'll be really funny in retrospective. Too bad I probably won't be alive to see it.
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It’s quite literally stealing code from repos under a GPL license and suggesting them to people regardless of license (if any) they’re using. I do not see how this is legal.
I disagree with this attitude. Many demos such as this one with Quake code are intentionally looking for (funny) outliers by bending the rules. But this is not how anyone would use the system in a real scenario (no one should select license by typing "// Copyright\t" and selecting whatever gets auto-completed), so it doesn't really demonstrate any new limits besides what you could reasonably expect anyway (and what's…
By typing “fast inverse square root”? That is hardly an outlier or manipulating the machine
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You mean like the insanely annoying AIs that replaced Google search? The idiotic one that files Javascript books under "Law" in Amazon or the insulting one who runs Ad Sense and thinks my wife isn't good enough and I am stupid enough to leave her for some mail order bride?
Javascript books under "Law" is hilarious
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Stack Overflow and Copilot are similar. Usage of both routinely violates licenses. Stack Overflow content is licensed under CC-BY-SA. Terms [1]: * Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. * ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or buil…
The difference here is that it's hard to sue a company for sporadic, difficult to track down usages of SO content written by their own engineers. One can now trivially coerce copilot to regurgitate copyrighted content without attribution. Copilot's basic premise violates the CC-BY-SA terms, and this will continue until no party can demonstrate a viable method of extracting copyrighted code. There is now a single part…
* Companies with engineers using Copilot. Risk here is negligible, like that of copying Stack Overflow answers, or any code that isn't under a truly permissive license like CC0 [1]. Prohibiting use of Copilot in a company based on this risk has no merit.
* GitHub and Microsoft. Risk for them is higher yet worthwhile. Copilot is more like Stack Overflow than Napster. Affected copyright holders added their works to GitHub and agreed to their terms, so GitHub has a legal basis to show that content in Copilot. In terms of facilitating copyright infringement, far more violations occur by engineers manually searching and copying code on GitHub; lawsuits against GitHub due to that would be dismissed. Determining provenance is slightly harder in Copilot than in search, but GitHub could minimize risk to itself by noting in Copilot terms that users must review Copilot's suggestions for underlying license concerns. Engineers rarely will -- they routinely violate licenses of Stack Overflow and code copied from elsewhere -- but that shifts responsibility from GitHub, and legal risk to companies using Copilot remains negligible.
[1] https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc...