OpenAI, Microsoft, and GitHub hit with lawsuit over Copilot

Lawyer and developer Matthew Butterick announced last month that he'd teamed up with the Joseph Saveri Law Firm to investigate Copilot. They wanted to know if and how the software infringed upon the legal rights of coders by scraping and emitting their work without proper attribution under current open-source licenses. Now, the firm has filed a class-action lawsuit in the District Court of Northern California in San Francisco. "We are challenging the legality of GitHub Copilot," Butterick said. "This is the first step in what will be a long journey. As far as we know, this is the first class-action case in the US challenging the training and output of AI systems. It will not be the last. AI systems are not exempt from the law. Those who create and operate these systems must remain accountable," he continued in a statement.