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Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

blogs.microsoft.com

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Re: Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

#291

Post by klyrs »

circuit10 wrote: post #283
tremon wrote: post #194

Let Microsoft first publish a Copilot model that's trained on the internal codebases of Azure, Windows and Office. That's the only way Microsoft can convince me that they truly believe Copilot is non-infringing technology.

They're not claiming that it can never spit out code exactly, but that they will take liability for if: - It does - The user didn't turn off the filters that prevent this - The user didn't intentionally make it do it - This use is found to be illegal There's a difference between code that needs to be kept private from bad actors (from their point of view at least) and code that is public but with restrictions on its…

> This use is found to be illegal

This being the real hurdle. With Microsoft money behind the defense, only megacorps can win.

Re: Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

#292

Post by tmpX7dMeXU »

dh2022 wrote: post #290
giantg2 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it really isn't when we're dealing with an organization that is audited for SOC 1/2, DoD, and likely others.

My friend - Chinese secret services read Secretary of Commerce's emails because of Microsoft's security leaks: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/commerce-secretary-gina-raim... So yeah, assuming Microsoft systems are up to standard or have security reviews or whatever is a .... big assumption.

My friend, nobody implied that any of these things result in a foolproof system.

Re: Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

#293

Post by iraqmtpizza »

satvikpendem wrote: post #192
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's likely that generative AI in general will be deemed fair use Everybody seems to be saying this, but I really don't think there's even 50% chance of it happening. Google books was fair use because it was a public benefit and did not take away from publishers or authors, to the contrary it helped people find their works. Compare generative AI which extracts the essence of people's works and recreates similar wor…

First, style is not copyrightable. I could draw something in a Studio Ghibli style and they could do nothing about it, legally speaking. Second, the way we've seen generative AI be used is not really the same as it was touted originally, that a mere prompt could replace an entire artist's work. A year later, we see that most people, artists included, don't use it as a verbatim text to image machine, they use it as a…

Ghibli style is probably trademarked. Different thing. Outline width, color palette, ambient noises, musical style, how the eyes and hands are drawn, when used together, would be possible to trademark I would think.

Re: Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

#294

Post by samch »

tremon wrote: post #194

Let Microsoft first publish a Copilot model that's trained on the internal codebases of Azure, Windows and Office. That's the only way Microsoft can convince me that they truly believe Copilot is non-infringing technology.

I believe you’re referring to GitHub Copilot which is a distinct offering in their portfolio (still Microsoft). GitHub Copilot was based on GPT-3 with fine tuning from public code repositories. That is the controversial aspect of it, I believe.

This blog post refers to the broader ecosystem of Microsoft Copilot solutions. Most of those tools rely on the Azure OpenAI API service on the backend and are not specifically tailored for code generation.

Re: Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

#295

Post by zargon »

londons_explore wrote: post #238
tremon wrote: post #194

Let Microsoft first publish a Copilot model that's trained on the internal codebases of Azure, Windows and Office. That's the only way Microsoft can convince me that they truly believe Copilot is non-infringing technology.

I suspect Microsoft would earn more money by doing this. Their own engineers would get productivity boosts - with copilot already being familiar with data structures, code style, etc. would be a big boost to accuracy. But also, third party code would end up being more similar. Code style of the whole world would be pushed towards 'Microsoft style', which probably makes hiring easier, less training time for engineers,…

It would be surprising to me if their internal engineers don't already have access to a model trained on internal Microsoft code.

Re: Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

#296

Post by Retric »

spott wrote: post #276
belorn wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Napster and the Pirate Bay founders argued that only users could be held responsible, since it was the user who requested the infringing files. It did not stop the courts. Anyone could use those tools to download creative common files and linux ISO, but those arguments did not succeed in the legal system. Bittorent as a technology was however not made illegal, as could be seen in games using it to distribute pat…

Napster and the Pirate Bay struggled because the vast majority of content was pirated. You would be hard pressed to say a significant minority of generative ai has any copyright issues, much less copyright issues as blatant as straight piracy.

I’m not convinced any of the output of these generative AI is free from copyright issues. Consider, a ROT13 copy of a book may at first glance look nothing like the original, but distributing digital copies would be clear copyright infringement.

Feature extraction is literally a form of lossy compression. You can prod DALEE to make obvious copies of some of the works it was trained on, but even seemingly novel images could contain enough similarities to training material to be problematic.

Re: Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

#297

Post by blibble »

hiq wrote: post #208
tboyd47 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys aren't really getting my question. Duh, of course Microsoft makes revenue when they have more Copilot customers. But taking on such a huge external liability for a $30 subscription product just doesn't make sense. Even if it gets 1 million subscribers, it would represent 0.1% of Microsoft's overall revenue. Software lawsuits can become multi-billion dollar expenses, and targeting Microsoft instead of random…

Many say that `expected revenue > expected expenses (including legal)` given the current regulatory framework, and maybe that's true and would explain this move. If Copilot becomes more widespread, it might also force regulators to adopt more friendly regulations that would favor it, lowering the expected legal expenses. So this move by Microsoft might just be the bootstrapping they need to get this dynamic going.

> If Copilot becomes more widespread, it might also force regulators to adopt more friendly regulations that would favor it

it could easily work the other way too

Re: Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

#298

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

satvikpendem wrote: post #192
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's likely that generative AI in general will be deemed fair use Everybody seems to be saying this, but I really don't think there's even 50% chance of it happening. Google books was fair use because it was a public benefit and did not take away from publishers or authors, to the contrary it helped people find their works. Compare generative AI which extracts the essence of people's works and recreates similar wor…

First, style is not copyrightable. I could draw something in a Studio Ghibli style and they could do nothing about it, legally speaking. Second, the way we've seen generative AI be used is not really the same as it was touted originally, that a mere prompt could replace an entire artist's work. A year later, we see that most people, artists included, don't use it as a verbatim text to image machine, they use it as a…

> First, style is not copyrightable

Wasn't suggesting it is. The point is that the tool is used to create things that substitute for the original authors' work by ingesting the works of those authors. The impact of the copying matters when weighing fair use.

If I use your copyrighted works to supplant you in some way, even as a part of a large group, then it's unlikely to be deemed fair use.

Re: Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

#299

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

spott wrote: post #276
belorn wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Napster and the Pirate Bay founders argued that only users could be held responsible, since it was the user who requested the infringing files. It did not stop the courts. Anyone could use those tools to download creative common files and linux ISO, but those arguments did not succeed in the legal system. Bittorent as a technology was however not made illegal, as could be seen in games using it to distribute pat…

Napster and the Pirate Bay struggled because the vast majority of content was pirated. You would be hard pressed to say a significant minority of generative ai has any copyright issues, much less copyright issues as blatant as straight piracy.

> You would be hard pressed to say a significant minority of generative ai has any copyright issues, much less copyright issues as blatant as straight piracy.

Where generative AI ingests copyrighted works in order to work and bases its output on it, then it is copyright infringement, equivalent to 'straight piracy' of all that it ingested, unless it's deemed fair use.

What Google does with its search engine, for example, is fair use, what Napster did was not.

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