Microsoft says its Copilot chatbot rarely reproduces news article content
In new court filings, Microsoft argues its Copilot chatbot almost never reproduces substantial portions of news articles or books, as it fights copyright claims from The New York Times and other publishers. The company is asking the judge to end the case early through summary judgment.
Microsoft has submitted new legal filings defending its Copilot chatbot in a copyright lawsuit brought by news publishers, including The New York Times, and a group of book authors against the company and OpenAI.
As part of the case's discovery process, Microsoft handed over 8.2 million Copilot chat logs to an expert hired by the news publishers. According to Microsoft, these logs were specifically selected because they contained keywords linked to the publishers' websites, making them the most likely to include matches with the plaintiffs' work.
The resulting analysis found that only 59,545 of those conversations shared at least 16 words in common with news content used to train the AI model. An expert for the Center for Investigative Reporting identified 51 instances of "substantial overlap" with the organization's work within the dataset. In the separate authors' lawsuit, an expert examining the same 8.2 million conversations found just 24 responses containing at least 30 matching words. Of 212 books reviewed, only 10 showed any matches at all.
Microsoft's fair use argument
Microsoft says these figures support its position that using copyrighted material in AI training datasets should qualify as fair use. While systems like Copilot are built using copyrighted content, the company argues, the resulting products serve purposes that are significantly different from the original works. The fact that the chatbot occasionally reproduces text snippets, Microsoft contends, does not undercut the transformative nature of training large language models.
The publishers and authors argue that Microsoft and OpenAI built products using their copyrighted work and are now directly competing with them, partly by regurgitating that content. The claims from news publishers and book authors were consolidated before a single judge to streamline proceedings, despite objections from both groups of plaintiffs.
Microsoft filed its request on Friday, asking the judge to grant summary judgment and end the case at an early stage. This week, the Trump administration also filed a statement of interest in the New York Times case in support of OpenAI. Should the judge rule in favor of the publishers and authors, the legal fight will continue in court.
