This copyright lawsuit may affect the future of artificial intelligence!

In recent days, a wave of layoffs, continued turmoil at Twitter, and the dramatic collapse of cryptocurrencies have left the technology industry "faltering."

However, generative artificial intelligence has given investors and entrepreneurs new hope.

Generative artificial intelligence refers to unsupervised and semi-supervised machine learning algorithms that enable computers to automatically generate coherent text, captivating images, and functional computer code.

Now this "blue sky" is also covered with layers of dark clouds.

This month, in a class action lawsuit filed in California federal court, the AI ​​programming assistance tool GitHub Copilot was sued in court.

Created by Microsoft subsidiary GitHub, Copilot is a powerful tool that hosts code for hundreds of millions of software projects and can automatically write working code as programmers work, too. A powerful demonstration of the creative and commercial potential of generative AI technology.

A new study from GitHub shows that when using Copilot, coders complete certain tasks in half the time of when not using it, resulting in a significant increase in productivity.

However, as some programmers have noticed, Copilot occasionally copies identifiable code snippets from the millions of lines of public code repositories.

Butterick, the programmer behind the lawsuit, claims that Microsoft, GitHub and OpenAI violated copyright because when Copilot copied open source code that needed to be covered by a license - it did not provide attribution.

Of course, programmers study, learn, and copy each other's code all the time, but not everyone thinks it's fair for an AI to do the same thing, especially if the AI ​​is allowed to operate without respecting the source material's licensing requirements. Generate a lot of valuable code by yourself.

"As a technologist, I have to admit that I am a big fan of artificial intelligence," Butterick said. "I look forward to all the possibilities of these tools, but it must be fair to everyone."

GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke said Copilot has features that prevent copying of existing code.

“When you enable it, Copilot will match the license of the code released on GitHub,” he said. “If there is no license, AI will not apply the relevant code.”

It remains to be seen whether this feature provides adequate legal protection.

GitHub co-founder Nat Friedman believes that tools like Copilot do not obviously violate the spirit of open source and free software.

"The free software movement in the 1980s and 1990s often talked about weakening the power of copyright in order to improve people's ability to code."

"I think It's kind of frustrating that we're in a situation now where there are people running around saying we need maximum copyright to protect these communities." Illustrations and “AI assistants” used in marketing copy are trained from previous human work.

Earlier, visual artists were the first group to question the legality and ethics of AI works.

Some people who make a living from visual creativity are upset that AI art tools trained on their work can generate new images in the same style.

Music industry organization the Recording Industry Association of America has said that AI-driven music generation and mixing may become the "hardest hit area" for copyright issues.

Currently, the lawsuit is still in its early stages and the prospects are unclear. Because many AI technology concepts are very new, they have never been examined from a legal perspective before.

Legal experts say this could have an impact on the future of generative AI tools because it challenges some of the most important principles that have underpinned advances in artificial intelligence over the past three decades.

“This lawsuit will definitely become a landmark case,” said Luis Villa, a lawyer who specializes in open source-related cases.

Reference:

https://gizmodo.com/ai-microsoft-dall-e-1849816871

https://www.wired.com/story/ this-copyright-lawsuit-could-shape-the-future-of-generative-ai/

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