Microsoft to handle legal risks if Copilot AI users get sued

New Delhi Microsoft has told customers of its AI Copilot services that if they are challenged on copyright grounds, the company will assume responsibility for the potential legal risks involved.

Announcing its new Copilot Copyright Commitment, the tech giant said if a third party sues a commercial customer for copyright infringement for using Microsoft’s Copilots or the output they generate, “we 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, said that some customers are concerned about the risk of IP infringement claims if they use the output produced by generative AI.

“This is understandable, given recent public inquiries by authors and artists regarding how their own work is being used in conjunction with AI models and services,” Smith said in a blog post late on Thursday. “The new commitment extends our existing intellectual property indemnity support to commercial Copilot services and builds on our previous AI Customer Commitments,” he added.

The company said it has built important guardrails into its AI Copilots to help respect authors’ copyrights.