We may well find out the answer to that when this lawsuit[0] concludes.

[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/8/23446821/microsoft-openai...

If Copilot generates the exact same code as the source, I don't see how that process could be exempt, it's like using the clipboard on your PC with extra steps.

It can generate the same code, but generally won't.

So Microsoft should provide blanket protections to the developers that use it?

No, for a number of reasons:

1) It's the code license that matters, and the depends on what license the code the developer is building is using

2) License compatibility is undecided (see eg the different views of Apache Foundation and FSF on the compatibility of ASF 2.0 and GPL)

3) It's easy for someone to deliberately produce code that violates a license. MS is a big target and you can bet license trolls would chase it on that.

Probably more reasons, but there's a good start.

3) is not a good reason. "Big fish" is not an excuse to not provide protection. The burden to protect others from harm as a direct result of a feature of a product is on the owner of that product.

Not if it opens them up to false claims.

But when it does generate the same code, you're unaware of infringing :)

Same.

Never ever I'm risking breaking copyright, and I also don't like Microsoft not including their own code in the model.

> I also don't like Microsoft not including their own code in the model

From allegations I have read across the Internet, Microsoft might be doing those who use Copilot a favor.

Do you mind explaining why? What do you think will happen?

This is a serious question, I'm apparently just unaware of the horror-stories that can come out of breaking copyright. (Not from the US so..)

For me its most useful for helping with bash scripts and small simple stuff, just saves a huge amount of time I would spend googling and checking small things. Not sure if copyright is relevant there or not, it certainly isn't something I am worried about. Interested to hear what your fears are based on.

ML text and image generators have a habit of regurgitating training data, especially if you happen to use certain inputs or prompts that also match said data even superficially. For example, type in "fast inverse square root"[0] and get out a bunch of Quake source code.

If you use code or art generated by an AI that was regurgitating training data, you can be sued for copyright infringement.

The way that AI gets training data these days is... questionably ethical. It's all scraped off the web, because the people who make these AIs saw court precedent for things like Google Books being fair use and assumed it would apply to data mining[1]. Problem is, that does nothing for the people actually using the AI to generate what they thought were novel code sequences or images, because fair use is not transitive.

[0] This won't work in current Copilot because a) I'm misremembering the comment phrasing and b) they explicitly banned that input from generating that output.

[1] In the EU, this practice is explicitly legal

So, this makes sense from the perspective of writing code professionally for a company. I don't buy that the risk is significant for an individual programmer, but I suppose it is plausible that lawsuits could pose a threat to a large organization.

But I find I get most pleasure out of using CoPilot for personal tasks, everyday stuff that isn't for work. Surely there is no issue there?

And to counter the note about the scraping sources-- I have recently (out of work) been experimenting with using CoPilot to translate open-source MATLAB code into python and zig. If I make something useful in this way, it will be open source and I will credit those who wrote the original code.

Surely a use-case like that last would have to tick all the moral and legal boxes?