Microsoft: Copilot is for entertainment purposes only
microsoft.com
microsoft.com
Non-commercial use only. You agree not to use our Services for any commercial or business purposes and we (and our Providers) have no liability to you for any loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption, or loss of business opportunity.
It's funny that a plan called "Pro" cannot be used professionally.
diff of the changes between US and UK:
https://www.diffchecker.com/BtqVrR9p/
There's the usual expected legal boilerplate differences. However, the UK version injects the additional clause at line 134 that has no analog in the US version.
In the UK the consumer terms say its subject to English law and the courts of the UK jurisdiction you live in.
The commercial terms say that in the UK, Switzerland and the EEA there will be binding arbitration by an arbitrator in Ireland appointed by the President of the Law Society of Ireland.
We are comparing like for like - an individual user using a Claude Pro subscription. A US user can use it for commercial use and be in compliance with the terms, the UK user cannot.
But why? My guess is the liability exposure is what they’re trying to control. So you probably can if you’re ok with no liability. It’s still noncompliant to how they wrote it but I would guess it’s the motivation. Unless they really just want to force the UK to pay for all commercial uses, which I suppose is possible.
Personally I would crumple it up and pitch it out the window. I don't know why they can't simply be clear about what clauses apply to which geographies. An IP address should not be assumed as a reliable indicator of the jurisdiction in which an end-user resides. (Eg. In addition of VPNs's and unexpected routing, what happens if you travel?)
One of the reasons we don’t use PostScript so much any more.
Indeed it does! https://github.com/ading2210/doompdf
Even within the US, employment contracts with the same organisation may contain different wording depending on the state in which the employment is occurring.
Before signing, yes, but once signed the contract stays constant. Mutating terms of service are weird - I would expect them to be locked to a canonical URL at least, like "https://.../tos?region=eu" or ideally something that locks the version too, like "https://.../tos?version=eu-002".
Let me pose a question from a different angle - these are legal contracts we are talking about, and the version they present to the user apparently changes based only on the client IP address. So if the terms in the EU ToS are better than in the US ToS, what would prevent me from signing up with an EU IP Address the first time? I would expect to be bound to the contract I actually agree to, not just the one they "intended" to show me.
The correct way to do this is to clearly distinguish them e.g. two different contracts, one titled "US Terms of Service" and another "European Terms of Service". Both with static content. Preferably PDF's or some other fixed format which you can download to redline changes when they inevitably tweak it every couple years, and properly print in the event you need to embark on litigation.
Not some "Global Terms of Service that silently change depending on quasi-pseudorandom network stack effects"
How the hell are you supposed to have confidence you're even looking at the right document? Contracts are meant to be clear and unambiguous, this dark pattern works against consensus ad idem.
This is one contract that mutates.
Other websites have EU terms, us terms, etc and declare which one you are covered under.
When sh!t hits the fan, Anthropic will immediately point to this clause. Who knows, maybe a court would see it as valid.
Meanwhile, your customer (and thus, your management) is looking for someone to blame for excrement making contact with the impellers. And that someone's gonna be you.
I reimplemented my startup idea from scratch with Codex a few months ago, just for peace of mind.
When a construction guy messes up measurements and thousands of dollars of work has the be removed and redone, no one thinks of taking the employee to court. Why would you want to take your Ai to court?
(Not only that, employees who got a reprimand too heavy handed can sue back. Plenty of cases around.)
"AI" company provides a service. They might or might not be adequate, that's not the point, the point is that the ability to sue them must always be on the cards if the agreed upon terms aren't met.
In your example the owners will often take the construction company or small business owner to court. Most trades people negotiate and redo the work for free or much reduced cost to avoid this.
In office settings if you expose PII you will likely be fired.
We were talking about people sueing AI for mistakes.
Employees do not get sued by their employer for mistakes. If your employer wants you to dig a foundation per plan, and you measure it wrong and dig it in the wrong orientation on the lot, you might get fired, but you will not pay the $50k+ to rip out the cement and put a new foundation.
This is not such a disclaimer. If Copilot fails its purpose of entertaining you, you can sue. /i
Although intentionally saying things that contradict whats in the contract might be legally objectionable.
When it's huge, falls upon people that can't justify a lawyer, and keeps changing all the time, one shouldn't even need to claim it. It should be automatically invalid.
Seems pretty clear to me, do you really think people need a lawyer to understand that?
Why would they include a product for entertainment purposes only in the product they sell to large companies for doing work?
So either that document is fraudulent or everyone else at Microsoft is committing fraud daily.
Examples from the first search result: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/microsoft-365-copi...
Support page with ~25 tutorials provided by Microsoft about how to "Create a document with Copilot" or "Create a branded presentation from a file" or "Start a Loop workspace from a Teams meeting".
Do you actually believe that creating branded presentations (from Microsoft's own examples) is something people do for "entertainment purposes"?
Granted that this one document has a surprisingly clear language, but no, it's still not reasonable. Also, it was changed less than 6 months ago.
If you just wrote them in "plain language" there would be far too much ambiguity and arguing over what was really meant or implied or agreed to.
It is not at all uncommon for such absurd contract terms to be unenforceable - especially in B2C contracts, although it might even be tricky for B2B clickthrough ones.
The idea being that most contracts are fairly standard, so a lot of people will just skim through them. Putting a landmine in them is obviously in bad faith, so making it enforceable would basically make it impossible to do any kind of business at all.
We cancelled at T-45 or so days before renewal, having determined it wasn't a fit for our client anymore, and they insisted "well, actually, you've renewed anyway!" which, no, we haven't. Absolutely absurd to try to "clickwrap" buried renewal terms in a 20+ page T&C/privacy document rather than as a material point of fact on the actual order form being executed.
Feels like the height of absurdity to try to bully your client into forcing them to use your services against their will when they still gave ample notice that they were cancelling and when there was no material loss to the business, but it's always felt like their revenue team has been unhinged in general: exploding offers, insane terms, super high-pressure sales... part of the reason we left them in the first place.
We live in a world where advertising boneless chicken does not actually mean the chicken does not contain bones.
In practice, availing yourself of any of these protections is a massively uphill battle. Judges tend to presume that these common law matters are already embedded into the de facto legal system because the people writing the laws already operated under those assumptions while framing the law. Personally, I disagree and think a lot of these protections have eroded away into either nothing, or so little that it might as well be nothing, but you have a 0% chance of drawing me as a judge in your case so that won't help you much if you try.
People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
He signed, sent both copies, got his bank signed copy back
Went yo the bank, the bank sued him, he won (the judge told the bank that when you play dirty games you sometimes loose) and they ultimately settled.
I can never find an article that mentions the final outcome.
> The legal action was later withdrawn by both the parties after an undisclosed settlement was reached.
That wouldn't work in the U.S. Changes to material terms in a contract generally informed consent (meaning, that the modifications are actually disclosed to the counterparty before they sign) or specific consent (such as a initializing the sections of the contract where the modifications occur). This is a basic part of the UCC, which all states have adopted in some form.
There are a lot of people on the internet claiming that you can get away with surreptitious material changes to a contract before it is signed. None of them are lawyers.
I never heard of a corporation being forced to point out explicitly which lines in their long terms and conditions document have changed. But it's a well known obligation for regular citizens, because material terms.
> that the modifications are actually disclosed to the counterparty before they sign
Does Microsoft explicitly draw your attention to the fact that Copilot is for entertainment purposes? No, it buries that in a long document hoping you won't see it, and advertises it as the complete opposite, but it's ok when they do it, because those are not material terms, whatever that means. It means it's ok when the big guys do it, in the end.
When corporations do it (i.e. change TOS) they need to send you notice of the new terms because it's no longer a change, it's a new contract that replaces the old one...if you agree to it by continuing to usetheir service after notice.
Why did he need to highlight some terms? How do you mean "change the nature of the agreement", change from what? They didn't have an agreement before this.
> because it's no longer a change, it's a new contract that replaces the old one
What sophistry is this? Of course it's a change. Most of the contract is the same, it's not like Paypal changes it's business to selling shoes. They do the same things, and the terms are mostly the same, only they make some changes. There's nothing supporting your claim that it's a new contract.
> things like price, term, or anything that would change the nature of the overall agreement
That's everything in the contract. Which parts of the contract don't affect the nature of the contract? Why are they there? What the hell is "the overall nature"? If a fee for something changes from $1 to $2, as I understand the english language, "the overall nature" of the contract doesn't change. Just a fee. It's a detail. But this is exactly what you list as "material terms".
It's all BS.
He changed the material terms of the contract so the other parties‘ obligations and rights were substantially different than what they had thought they were in the original version. In the U.S. his actions would have resulted in him being bound by the contract but the other party not being bound.
Doubling the price of a contract is a material term. Basically anything that would make someone change their mind about entering into the contract is material, but price and term are always material by law.
Stuff that isn't normally negotiated isn't material, like jurisdiction for disputes.
The words they used, as commonly understood by the target audience, were intentionally crafted to be interpreted differently than what they were going to say they meant in court. They spent time, effort, and money, ran focus groups, and carefully selected and curated their words to be incorrectly interpreted by the target audience to reach knowingly false conclusions.
The correct standard should be that they spent time, effort, and money, ran focus groups, and carefully selected and curated their words to be correctly interpreted by the target audience to reach true conclusions. Their statements should only be accidentally incorrect in proportion to the time and effort spent crafting and distributing them.
"Technically, your honor", should be treated as the ethical abomination it is.
“These Terms don’t apply to Microsoft 365 Copilot apps or services unless that specific app or service says that these Terms apply.”
Think of Copilot being a suite of different products under the same overall banner and it starts to make (a bit) more sense.
Are you saying that the business version cannot make mistakes and can be relied upon for important advice?
To be fair to them, MS are quite open about accuracy for the business offerings, see here as one example:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot/microsoft-365/micr...
> IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES & WARNINGS
Tells us:
> You may stop using Copilot at any time.
That's an odd thing to include in a ToS.
And belive me, if you use any Microsoft products or services they really make it hard to avoid accidentally using the damn thing.
Including adding it to your office plan and then charging you 2x.
just to be greeted with an email that welcomed me to copilot and the free plan. No button or link to disable the thing.
The line i initially quoted:
> You may stop using Copilot at any time.
Was incomplete. It continues with what initially appears to be a non sequitur:
> You may stop using Copilot at any time. If you want to close your Microsoft Account, please see the Microsoft Services Agreement.
It may not be a non sequitur, but may well be the only way to "opt out" of Copilot.
> That's an odd thing to include in a ToS.
Maybe it's the only Microsoft product for which that's true? (It certainly feels that way, sometimes.)
To be fair, "stop using" does not automatically imply "stop paying for a subscription".
- ‚Are you for entertainment purposes only?‘
-‚Not at all — unless you want me to be. The short version: I’m not “for entertainment only.”‘
Edit: Ok I see it is legal framing to not be held liable, but can they just do that via ToS and let the tool itself promote something else?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffal...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_.NET_strategy
- (Microsoft) Active Accessibility (MSAA): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Active_Accessibility
- Active Channel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Channel
- ActiveX Data Objects (ADO): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActiveX_Data_Objects
- Active Desktop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Desktop
- ActiveMovie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActiveMovie
- Active Server Pages (ASP): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Server_Pages
- Active Setup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Setup
- ActiveSync: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActiveSync
---
In particular at the time around Windows Vista, Microsoft named a lot of technologies "Windows ... Foundation", for example:
- Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
- Windows Driver Foundation (today: Windows Driver Frameworks): https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Windows_Driver_Fr...
- Windows Identity Foundation
- Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
- Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)
---
Also the "Windows Media ..." branding was big for media technologies at the respective time:
- Windows Media Audio (WMA)
- Windows Media Center, Windows Media Connect (both abbreviated to WMC): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Connect
- (Windows) Media Center Extender (MCX): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Center_Extender
- Windows Media Device Manager: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/wmdm/windows...
- Windows Media DRM
- Windows Media Encoder (WME)
- Windows Media Player (WMP)
- Windows Media Services (WMS): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Services
- Windows Media Video (WMV)
we can’t promise that any Copilot’s Responses won’t infringe someone else’s rights (like their copyrights, trademarks, or rights of privacy) or defame them.
You agree to indemnify us and hold us harmless (including our affiliates, employees and any other agents) from and against any claims, losses, and expenses (including attorneys' fees) arising from or relating to your use of Copilot
They do seem to word this at a more professional level in this context (the terms linked are for individuals using Copilot in Windows, probably?)
Says the bot based on scraped data
> We don’t own Your Content, but we may use Your Content to operate Copilot and improve it. By using Copilot, you grant us permission to use Your Content, which means we can copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, edit, translate, and reformat it, and we can give those same rights to others who work on our behalf.
lol
This is why I'm skeptical about all this AI coding thing...
Maybe a shirt, could sell it on the Microsoft store even. Now that would be entertainment.
Copilot is for entertainment purposes only.
- Tarot cards[1]
- Reality TV shows
- Psychic hotlines
Caveat emptor.
The section titled "WHEN & WHERE THESE TERMS APPLY" includes:
> Conversations you have with Copilot through other Microsoft apps and websites
- Conversations you have with Copilot through third-party apps and platforms
- Other Copilot-branded apps and services that link to these Terms
That first point (#4 in the original list) can cover all software, Copilot-branded or otherwise, which, even internally, uses Copilot (perhaps without your knowing so).
Github Copilot (to take your specific example) is both "other Microsoft apps and websites" and "Copilot-branded". So, yeah, those ToS undoubtedly apply to Github Copilot.
Now what?! Do I have to uninstall Windows?
https://www.allsides.com/news/2022-02-08-0800/media-industry...
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fox-news-entertainment-swi...
Is slapping "Made for AI" label on every device in the known universe entertaining?
Software in general is usually provided on an "as is" basis with the creator not taking responsibility for anything going wrong.
"We don’t own Your Content... By using Copilot, you grant us permission to use Your Content, which means we can copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, edit, translate, and reformat it, and we can give those same rights to others who work on our behalf."
Nah, I don't think so. It sucks at that.
Eg. "If you see something wrong or inappropriate from Copilot, use the Report or Feedback features in Copilot to let us know."
Does that bind me to a commitment to report? Am I in breach of the Terms if I see something wrong and I don't?
I really hope judges take the way these "contemporary" terms are written as a signal of just how little bargaining power end-users have and start nullifying unfair clauses. It's getting ridiculous how one-sided these so-called agreements are. Companies don't want to take any responsibility whatsoever for the slop they're shilling.
> You may stop using Copilot at any time.
But how? Microsoft has shoved it into so many products that I don't see how it's possible, without dropping them alltogether.
> These Terms apply to your use of “Copilot,” which includes:
> The standalone Copilot apps on your computer or mobile device
> The Copilot service we offer at copilot.microsoft.com, copilot.com, and copilot.ai
> Conversations you have with Copilot through other Microsoft apps and websites
> Conversations you have with Copilot through third-party apps and platforms
> Other Copilot-branded apps and services that link to these Terms
> These Terms don’t apply to Microsoft 365 Copilot apps or services unless that specific app or service says that these Terms apply.
"Funny how? I mean, funny like I’m a clown? I amuse you? I make you laugh? I’m here to fuckin’ amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how?"