Security News > 2022 > November > Microsoft sued for open-source piracy through GitHub Copilot
Programmer and lawyer Matthew Butterick has sued Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI, alleging that GitHub's Copilot violates the terms of open-source licenses and infringes the rights of programmers.
GitHub Copilot, released in June 2022, is an AI-based programming aid that uses OpenAI Codex to generate real-time source code and function recommendations in Visual Studio.
While Copilot can speed up the process of writing code and ease software development, its use of public open-source code has caused experts to worry that it violates licensing attributions and limitations.
Terick fears that given enough time, Copilot will cause open source communities to decline, and by extension, the quality of the code in the training data will diminish.
BleepingComputer has contacted both Microsoft and GitHub for a comment on the above, and we received the following statement from GitHub.
"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." - GitHub.