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Microsoft says it will defend customers of its AI Copilots from copyright lawsuits

  • The US tech giant says it will protect customers as long as they have used the guardrails and content filters it has built into its products
  • Microsoft is integrating many of its biggest products with generative AI technology, which scoops up existing content to create new material

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Microsoft is integrating many of its biggest products with generative AI, which scoops up existing content to create new material, potentially putting customers in legal jeopardy. Photo: AP Photo
Bloomberg
Microsoft says it will defend buyers of its artificial intelligence products from copyright infringement lawsuits, an effort by the software giant to ease concerns customers might have about using its AI “Copilots” to generate content based on existing work.

The Microsoft Copilot Copyright Commitment will protect customers as long as they have “used the guardrails and content filters we have built into our products” Hossein Nowbar, general counsel, corporate legal affairs and corporate secretary at Microsoft, said in a blog post on Thursday. Microsoft also pledged to pay related fines or settlements and said it has taken steps to ensure its Copilots respect copyright.

“We believe in standing behind our customers when they use our products,” Nowbar said. “We are charging our commercial customers for our Copilots, and if their use creates legal issues, we should make this our problem rather than our customers’ problem.”

Generative AI applications scoop up existing content such as art, articles and programming code and use it to generate new material that can simplify or automate a range of tasks. Microsoft is baking the technology, developed with partner OpenAI, into many of its biggest products, including Office and Windows, potentially putting customers in legal jeopardy.

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Artists, writers and software developers are already filing lawsuits or raising objections about their creations being used without their consent. In one complaint, lawyer and computer programmer Matthew Butterick accused Microsoft’s GitHub partner of allegedly violating open-source software development licences.

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