Lawsuit Raises Copyright Concerns in AI-Generated Work

Github Copilot, an AI tool that automatically suggests blocks of code to add as programmers type, has recently come under the scanner for the violation of open-source licenses. Earlier this month, a programmer and lawyer, Matthew Butterick, along with a team of lawyers, filed a class-action lawsuit in the US against Github Copilot, its parent company Microsoft, and AI-technology partner OpenAI, claiming that the tool profits "from the work of open-source programmers by violating the conditions of their open-source licenses." The people behind the lawsuit alleged that Copilot does not provide attribution when it reproduces code, violating the licenses governing open-source code, noted an article in Wired. Joseph Saveri, founder of the law firm behind the suit, called it the "first major step in the battle against intellectual-property violations in the tech industry arising from artificial-intelligence systems." The New York Times noted that the lawsuit may well be the first "legal attack" on the way AI is trained.