Class-action complaint contends that training the AI system on public GitHub repos violates the legal rights of creators who posted the code under open-source licenses. Credit: Thinkstock While GitHub continues to trumpet the effectiveness of GitHub Copilot, its AI-driven coding assistant, a class-action lawsuit has been filed that challenges the legality of the technology. The lawsuit claims that GitHub’s training the Copilot AI on public GitHub repositories has violated the rights of the “vast number of creators” who posted code under open-source licenses on GitHub. Filed in the US District Court in San Francisco on behalf of perhaps millions of GitHub users, the class-action complaint alleges that “Copilot ignores, violates, and removes the licenses offered by thousands—possibly millions—of software developers, thereby accomplishing software piracy on an unprecedented scale.” The litigation seeks recovery of damages and restitution. The lawsuit is believed to be the first class-action case in the US challenging the training and output of AI systems. “It will not be the last,” said lawyer and programmer Matthew Butterick, who spearheaded the lawsuit, in a bulletin on the action. Besides GitHub, defendants include GitHub owner Microsoft and OpenAI, the co-developer of Copilot. GitHub Copilot is tool that suggests code snippets and functions in real time, right from the developer’s code editor. It has been trained on billions of lines of code. “Spend less time creating boilerplate and repetitive code patterns, and more time on what matters: building great software,” the GitHub Copilot website advises. But the tool immediately drew the ire of the Free Software Foundation, which cried foul on Copilot’s use of freely licensed software. GitHub, in response to the lawsuit, released a statement this week defending the technology while pledging to evolve. “We’ve been committed to innovating responsibly with Copilot from the start, and will continue to evolve the product to best serve developers across the globe.” The next major release of Copilot is slated to provide the ability to identify strings that match public code with a reference to those repositories. With this information, developers might be inspired by other codebases and could gain confidence that a fragment is appropriate for use in their project, GitHub noted. GitHub said businesses soon will be able to purchase and manage Copilot seat licenses for employees. Related content analysis Beyond the usual suspects: 5 fresh data science tools to try today The mid-month report includes quick tips for easier Python installation, a new VS Code-like IDE just for Python and R users, and five newer data science tools you won't want to miss. By Serdar Yegulalp Jul 12, 2024 2 mins Python Programming Languages Software Development analysis Generative AI won’t fix cloud migration You’ve probably heard how generative AI will solve all cloud migration problems. It’s not that simple. Generative AI could actually make it harder and more costly. By David Linthicum Jul 12, 2024 5 mins Generative AI Artificial Intelligence Cloud Computing news HR professionals trust AI recommendations HireVue survey finds 73% of HR professionals trust AI to make candidate recommendations, while 75% of workers are opposed to AI making hiring decisions. By Paul Krill Jul 11, 2024 3 mins Technology Industry Careers how-to Safety off: Programming in Rust with `unsafe` What does it mean to write unsafe code in Rust, and what can you do (and not do) with the 'unsafe' keyword? The facts may surprise you. By Serdar Yegulalp Jul 11, 2024 8 mins Rust Programming Languages Software Development Resources Videos