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Copilot and all other AI systems pose an existential crisis to creative writers like me. I'm an author of science fiction books, but I could soon be replaced by AI generated stories that are little more than regurgitated intellectual property, stolen from me and every other human author. My trade organization, the Science Fiction Writers Association, has written a detailed letter to the US Copyright Office on this danger (read it https://www.sfwa.org/2023/11/03/sfwa-comments-on-ai-to-us-copyright-office/). I'm especially concerned about Microsoft incorporating AI into writing tools like Microsoft Word, which I use daily to write my books. If my copyrighted work is sucked into an AI tool without my consent, this would be a grave copyright infringement. How can authors be absolutely sure that this will not happen? As SFWA notes in their letter to the USCO: "We recommend requiring proof of license or legal right to all training data before any AI-generated work based on that data can be incorporated into a copyright registration." It is not enough for a CEO to say, "we don't use copyrighted material". Use of Copilot to generate text should require proof of the legal right to that specific text.
- aschilbach
Microsoft
Thank you for your question. I can understand why this is a concern. Copilot is not trained on customer data. You can find detailed information about this and Microsoft 365 Copilot's data, privacy, and security policy here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot/microsoft-365/microsoft-365-copilot-privacy Second, if you ever do choose to use Copilot for your writing, Copilot in Word generates content based on language patterns it has found throughout the internet. Sometimes its results will be very similar to existing internet content. Or, Copilot might generate the same or very similar content for multiple people who are prompting Copilot in the same way. For example, everyone who instructs Copilot to create a "recipe for apple pie" is likely to wind up with identical or nearly identical content. When originality is a concern, check for similarity to online sources (on the Home tab, go to Editor, and scroll down to Similarity). You can find some other common Q&A here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/frequently-asked-questions-about-copilot-in-word-7fa03043-130f-40f3-9e8b-4356328ee072
