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Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI want the court to dismiss a proposed class action complaint that accuses the companies of scraping licensed code to build GitHub\u2019s AI-powered Copilot tool, as reported earlier by Reuters<\/em><\/a>. In a pair of<\/a> filings<\/a> submitted to a San Francisco federal court on Thursday, the Microsoft-owned GitHub and OpenAI say the claims outlined in the suit don\u2019t hold up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Things came to a head when programmer and lawyer, Matthew Butterick, teamed up with the legal team at Joseph Saveri Law Firm to file a proposed class action lawsuit last November<\/a>, alleging the tool relies on \u201csoftware piracy on an unprecedented scale.\u201d Butterick and his legal team later filed a second<\/a> proposed class action lawsuit on the behalf of two anonymous software developers on similar grounds, which is the suit Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI want dismissed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As noted in the filing, Microsoft and GitHub say the complaint \u201cfails on two intrinsic defects: lack of injury and lack of an otherwise viable claim,\u201d while OpenAI similarly says the plaintiffs \u201callege a grab bag of claims that fail to plead violations of cognizable legal rights.\u201d The companies argue that the plaintiffs rely on \u201chypothetical events\u201d to make their claim, and say they don\u2019t describe how they were personally harmed by the tool.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cCopilot withdraws nothing from the body of open source code available to the public,\u201d Microsoft and GitHub claim in the filing. \u201cRather, Copilot helps developers write code by generating suggestions based on what it has learned from the entire body of knowledge gleaned from public code.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Additionally, Microsoft and GitHub go on to claim that the plaintiffs are the ones who \u201cundermine open source principles\u201d by asking for \u201can injunction and a multi-billion dollar windfall\u201d in relation to the \u201csoftware that they willingly share as open source.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The court hearing to dismiss the suit will take place in May, and Joseph Saveri Law Firm didn\u2019t immediately respond to The Verge<\/em>\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n With other companies looking into AI as well, Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI aren\u2019t the only ones facing legal issues. Earlier this month, Butterick and Joseph Saveri Law Firm filed another lawsuit alleging<\/a> the AI art tools created by MidJourney, Stability AI, and DeviantArt violate copyright laws by illegally scraping artists\u2019 work from the internet. Getty Images is also suing Stability AI over claims<\/a> the company\u2019s Stable Diffusion tool \u201cunlawfully\u201d scraped images from the site. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n