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Current Event 6

Topic of Article: Technology & Law

Title of Article: Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI ask court to throw out AI copyright lawsuit

Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI ask court to throw out AI copyright lawsuit

Who

The story is about Microsoft (and it’s subsidiaries GitHub and OpenAI)

What

The story is about how AI developed and used by these companies could be infringing copyrighted material

  1. GitHub Copilot, an AI powered code assistant, uses publicly available code from GitHub
  2. This sparked concerns of whether or not they violated copyright laws pertaining to the use of the code
  3. Microsoft and GitHub complain that it “fails on two intrinsic defects: lack of injury and lack of an otherwise viable claim.”
  4. Microsoft and GitHub also claim that the plaintiff are ones who “undermine open source principles” - as the software on GitHub that is available to the public is software that is willingly shared

When

This article was posted 2 days ago

Where

Though there no specific location for these products as they reside on the Internet, the court document is being processed by the US District Court - Northern District of California - San Francisco Division Court

Why

This court case may effect products such as ChatGPT, GitHub copilot, and other AI powered tools. With AI becoming a more popular method of increasing our efficiency, the legality of the methods being used to train these may be affected by this court case.

Connect

As a programmer and student, I’m able to have access to GitHub copilot - which has been a great help in speeding up the coding process. Additionally, the topic of AI has become incredibly interesting with tools such as ChatGPT.

Question

If an AI is trained after copyrighted data, are its results considered copyright infringement?