• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 8, 2023

Microsoft this week announced it has “built important guardrails” into its Copilot's artificial intelligence (AI) products to help respect authors' copyrights. 

This new commitment extends Microsoft's existing intellectual property support to commercial Copilot services and builds on its previous AI Customer Commitments.

The company said that if a “third party sues a commercial customer for copyright infringement for using Microsoft’s Copilots or the output they generate, it will defend the customer and pay the amount of any adverse judgments or settlements that result from the lawsuit, as long as the customer used the guardrails and content filters we have built into our products,” Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft; and Hossein Nowbar, corporate vice president and chief legal officer, wrote in a post.

There are conditions to the program. Acknowledging there are potential ways the technology could intentionally be misused to generate harmful content, Microsoft said its customers must use the content filters and other safety systems built into the product and must not attempt to generate infringing materials, including not providing input to a Copilot service that the customer does not have appropriate rights to use.

The company published additional details of the Copilot Copyright Commitment for customers in a post.