A lawsuit challenging Github CoPilot, an AI product that relies on open-source software piracy.

 Today, we’ve filed a class-action law­suit in US fed­eral court in San Fran­cisco, CA on behalf of a pro­posed class of pos­si­bly mil­lions of GitHub users. We are chal­leng­ing the legal­ity of GitHub Copi­lot (and a related prod­uct, OpenAI Codex, which pow­ers Copi­lot). The suit has been filed against a set of defen­dants that includes GitHub, Microsoft (owner of GitHub), and OpenAI.

https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/

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. If com­pa­nies like Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI choose to dis­re­gard the law, they should not expect that we the pub­lic will sit still. AI needs to be fair & eth­i­cal for every­one. If it’s not, then it can never achieve its vaunted aims of ele­vat­ing human­ity. It will just become another way for the priv­i­leged few to profit from the work of the many.