Court ruling suggests AI systems may be in the clear as long as they don't make exact copies
A California district court has partially dismissed a copyright lawsuit against Microsoft's GitHub Copilot programming tool and its former underlying language model, OpenAI's Codex. The ruling could set a precedent for AI tools trained on copyrighted data.
A California district court has partially dismissed a copyright lawsuit against GitHub Copilot and OpenAI's Codex, rejecting claims that the AI tools infringe copyrights by reproducing source code without adhering to license terms.
The court found that plaintiffs failed to prove Copilot makes identical copies of protected works, which is necessary for Digital Millennium Copyright Act claims. It dismissed arguments about Copilot's ability to accurately reproduce copyrighted code. The decision could set a precedent for AI systems trained on copyrighted data.
While dismissing claims for unjust enrichment and unfair competition, the court allowed a claim for breach of open-source license agreements to proceed.