Microsoft will defend AI Copilot commercial customers against copyright claims

Posted 1 year ago in topic European Law

Microsoft has been going all in on its AI endeavors recently. The company has been integrating its AI Copilot services across its Microsoft 365 suite of products and even Windows. However, as the Redmond tech firm expands services in this field of generative AI (GAI), there are natural concerns regarding the potential legal and regulatory hurdles, due to the technology being at a stage of relative infancy. Now, Microsoft has addressed some of the questions in this area in an attempt to assure commercial customers that they should use its GAI technologies without worrying about the legalities.

Microsoft President Brad Smith has announced the Copilot Copyright Commitment, which essentially tells commercial customers that they are safeguarded against any copyright claims made regarding generated by its copilot services. Microsoft says that it will assume all responsibility on behalf of a commercial customer as long as they used the relevant technologies within the safety measures and agreements put in place by the firm. It says that this move is similar to the company's protection against patent claims for its other products; essentially, the customer shouldn't have to worry about such things.

Another commitment made by Microsoft involves being "sensitive" to the concerns of authors whose content is being leveraged to train AI models. It believes that facilitating advancements in this area is also its responsibility, not the customer's. That said, it has emphasized that it is important that customers remain within the boundaries set by Microsoft when it comes to generating content through AI services, since there are a number of safety nets already in place to respect copyright laws and apply appropriate content filtering, monitoring, and similar safety measures.

It is important to note that Microsoft's new Copilot Copyright Commitment only extends to commercial customers, which includes users of GitHub Copilot,Bing Chat Enterprise,Microsoft 365 Copilot, and other paid Copilot initiatives in tools like Power BI, Viva Sales, Dynamics 365, and more. This means that if you generate copyright-infringing content in a personal capacity through Bing Chat, you may not be legally covered against lawsuits under Microsoft's Copilot Copyright Commitment.