Legal considerations regarding LLMs

Terms of service provider

  • AI service providers' terms might restrict commercial use of generated outputs.

GDPR

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heise ix: DSGVO-konformes Machine Learning aus der Cloud

This paragraph provides an overview of the current situation in Germany.

  • AI-generated content is not safeguarded by copyright laws → public domain

    • For content to be protected under copyright laws, it must be created by a human.

  • Integrating AI as a tool in the creative process can lead to outputs that are copyright protected, for example when you revise a text that includes your own ideas.

  • A prompt may fall under copyright law if it demonstrates a sufficient level of creativity.

  • AI-generated content may include segments of training data that could be protected by copyright laws → be careful when using output

    • Risk management is necessary, since AI will not provide sources of the material

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In der Grauzone | c't | heise magazine

Das Urheberrecht und die Fallen bei Nutzung von generativer KI - Verbraucherportal-BW

Bundesministerium der Justiz - FAQ KI und Urheberrecht.docx

heise ix: KI aus der Cloud: Verträge richtig gestalten

Open Source Licences (Copyleft)

If the AI system was trained using Open Source code that carries a copyleft license, the generated output may include snippets of the training data, especially when the prompt asked for standard problems.

This affects the following Open Source licenses:

(blue star) Affected (copyleft)

(tick) Not affected

  • GPL 2.0 / GPL 3.0

    • 60% of all OSS projects

  • MPL (Mozilla Public License)

    • Copyleft only if existing code was modified

  • BSD License

    • License text must be included

  • MIT License

    • License text only for significant parts of the original code

  • Apache License

This leads to the legal issue, that the product using the resulting code might need to be published under the same license as the training code (see (blue star) Copyleft – Wikipedia) including publication of the source code.

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[2502.05023] On the Possibility of Breaking Copyleft Licenses When Reusing Code Generated by ChatGPT

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heise ix: Rechtliche Unsicherheit beim Coding mit KI

AI risks

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MIT: The AI Risk Repository

Data residency

For customers in the European Union it might be necessary to process data only within the boundaries of the European Union and especially not transfer it to the US.

Microsoft therefore introduces the “EU Data Boundary” (EUDB).

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What is the EU Data Boundary? - Microsoft Privacy | Microsoft Learn

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is the version of Copilot included for free in most of the Microsoft 365 business subscriptions.

For the business version of Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, Microsoft ensures for European users, that EU traffic does not leave the EU Data Boundary.

This includes the API calls to the LLM, which are processed within Europe.

(blue star) Search queries (Web search triggered by Copilot) using Bing) might be processed outside of the EU Data Boundary!