Microsoft Says Copilot Rarely Reproduced News Articles in Court Filing

Microsoft provided 8.2 million Copilot chat logs to an expert hired by the news publishers as part of discovery. The company said the logs were selected “because they hit on keywords implicating use of News Plaintiffs’ websites, and therefore the most likely to contain News Plaintiffs’ works.” According to Microsoft, the analysis showed that 59,545 of the logs contained at least 16 words in common with news content used to ground the AI model. An expert for the Center for Investigative Reporting found 51 instances of “substantial overlap” with CIR work in the dataset, while an expert in the authors’ suit found only 24 responses with at least 30 matching words across the 8.2 million conversations. Microsoft also said just 10 of the 212 books evaluated had any matches. The Times, CIR and the Authors Guild did not immediately respond to requests for comment, The Verge reported.

Microsoft argues that the numbers strengthen its case that using copyrighted content to train AI datasets should be considered fair use. The company said systems like Copilot rely on copyrighted material, but the resulting systems serve significantly different purposes from the original works. The occasional reproduction of text sections, it said, “hardly undermines the transformative purpose of LLM training.”

The filings are part of a consolidated lawsuit brought by news publishers and book authors against Microsoft and OpenAI. The plaintiffs claim the companies built products on their works and now compete with them, partly by regurgitating copyrighted content. Microsoft submitted its filing on Friday, asking the judge to issue a summary judgment and end the case before trial. The Trump administration filed a statement of interest this week in the New York Times case supporting OpenAI. If the judge sides with the publishers and authors, the legal battle will continue in court.