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Posted by lpcvoid 4 hours ago

Microsoft: Copilot is for entertainment purposes only(www.microsoft.com)
240 points | 90 comments
wowoc 1 hour ago|
Anthropic does a somewhat similar thing. If you visit their ToS (the one for Max/Pro plans) from a European IP address, they replace one section with this:

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.

https://www.anthropic.com/legal/consumer-terms

giobox 30 minutes ago||
Ha out of curiosity I loaded that same terms URL on both a USA and a UK VPN exit node - sure enough, the UK terms inject that extra clause you quoted banning commercial usage that is not present for USA users.
graemep 21 minutes ago||
In the Uk there seem to be separate commercial and consumer terms.

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.

lenerdenator 2 minutes ago||
Well, there's your rationale as to why AI cannot replace you.

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.

everdrive 3 hours ago||
Lawyers are playing Calvinball again. I have no idea why the law finds this kind of argumentation compelling. "I clearly intentionally deceived, but I stashed some bullshit legalese into a document no one will read so my deception is completely OK."
BrandoElFollito 18 minutes ago||
Some 20 years ago there was a story about a guy who was opening a bank account. The bank sent the contract, the guy ameneded it with things like "you will give le unlimited credit that I do not need to repay" (if my memory serves me right).

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.

torginus 3 hours ago|||
My two cents is that if it didn't, 'I didn't know that was illegal/breach of contract' would be a valid legal defense.

Although intentionally saying things that contradict whats in the contract might be legally objectionable.

crote 2 hours ago|||
On the other hand: imagine someone putting "by agreeing to this, you owe us $1,000,000,000 - unless you opt out in writing within 90 days" halfway down the 100-page EULA of some cookie-cutter smartphone app.

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.

disillusioned 29 minutes ago|||
FullStory just tried to pull this with their renewal. We had a mult-year contract that started with a two-page order form, on which the words "renewal" or "cancellation" never once appear. During negotiations, it was never discussed that the plan would renew, or that there was a cancellation window. Instead, buried at the very bottom of the form (which they send via CongaSign, and wasn't clickable or obvious), was a line about their subscription agreement being linked to their terms and conditions page. On THAT page, they mention the plan will auto renew and must be cancelled with 60 days notice.

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.

observationist 2 hours ago|||
On the other other hand, they can put whatever they want in there, and because they've forced everything into arbitration with "third party" mediation and carved out their own little niche of the justice system, they'll never actually go to court, they'll just settle and evolve their ToS and contracts and word games accordingly.
graemep 39 minutes ago||
Not going to work in a lot of countries, again, especially with regard to consumer contracts.
ryandrake 2 hours ago||||
I wish we lived in more of a "spirit of the law" world than a "letter of the law" world, where everything needs to be spelled out, but we don't. A small minority of people enjoy Rules Lawyering their way through life, insisting on trying to "gotcha" counterparties who are acting in good faith, so as a consequence, we all have to be Rules Lawyers and everything needs to be spelled out.
xboxnolifes 41 minutes ago|||
We live in neither. Many things spelled out are unenforceable. Maybe things not spelled out are implied.

We live in a world where advertising boneless chicken does not actually mean the chicken does not contain bones.

d3ckard 1 hour ago||||
No, you don’t. It only sounds nice. In practice this enables all kinds of spontaneous prosecution with any possible motive.
WesolyKubeczek 1 hour ago|||
Theoretically, courts and judges exist precisely to balance the word and the spirit, and find and judge the actual intent. In practice, I'm in awe that good judgments still happen, despite everything.
marcosdumay 2 hours ago||||
When the contract is purposefully obtuse and hard to understand, that should be a valid legal defense.

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.

voxic11 2 hours ago||
> Copilot is for entertainment purposes only. It can make mistakes, and it may not work as intended. Don’t rely on Copilot for important advice. Use Copilot at your own risk.

Seems pretty clear to me, do you really think people need a lawyer to understand that?

andy81 2 hours ago|||
The only thing "clear" about that License agreement is it contradicts all their other marketing about Copilot.

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"?

jon-wood 2 hours ago||||
If Copilot is for entertainment purposes only then why is https://office.com all about how you can use Copilot, and closes with the small print "Copilot Chat in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app is available for Microsoft 365 Enterprise, Academic, SMB, Personal and Family subscribers with a work, education, or personal account."

Why would they include a product for entertainment purposes only in the product they sell to large companies for doing work?

WesolyKubeczek 1 hour ago||
Microsoft is pivoting to become an entertainment company, the Copilot being the final form of what Microsoft Bob has always wanted to become.
marcosdumay 48 minutes ago||||
There are 1698 words before that phrase.

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.

Sharlin 2 hours ago||||
Sure, if you make that clear in all of your marketing rather than lying your ass off and then trying the "lol we didn’t really mean it" defense.
lazide 2 hours ago|||
If it’s in a locked cabinet in the downstairs bathroom with the ‘out of order’ sign on the door, guarded by a leopard?
recursive 2 hours ago||
A disused lavatory?
lazide 2 hours ago||
We can neither confirm nor deny on advice of counsel.
ThrowawayR2 2 hours ago||
"Our software developers clearly were negligent, but we stashed some bullshit legalese saying 'No warranty express or implied' into a document no one will read so our bug-infested software is completely OK."

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

owenm 40 minutes ago||
As far as I can tell, this is only for the free personal plan, not any of the business offerings (ie not Copilot for M365) and Github Copilot is under a separate set of terms.

“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.

brunoborges 17 minutes ago||
This should be the top comment.
harvey9 22 minutes ago||
Not really since the clause in full is "Copilot is for entertainment purposes only. It can make mistakes, and it may not work as intended. Don’t rely on Copilot for important advice. Use Copilot at your own risk."

Are you saying that the business version cannot make mistakes and can be relied upon for important advice?

owenm 1 minute ago||
No, I’m saying that MS have different terms for their business and personal offerings (as do OpenAI and Anthropic).

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...

jeffwask 3 hours ago||
I can hear the lawyers huddled around a conference table rolling the bones and chanting the sacred words to come up with that "get out of trouble free" card. It told your son he had terminal cancer and should kill himself... sorry, it clearly says for Entertainment Purposes only.
nunez 59 minutes ago||
FYI: This is only for the "Cortana replacement" Copilot, not the other Copilots. This language doesn't appear in GitHub Copilot's Consumer Agreement, for example.
sgbeal 3 hours ago||
The section titled

> IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES & WARNINGS

Tells us:

> You may stop using Copilot at any time.

That's an odd thing to include in a ToS.

throwa356262 2 hours ago||
I am working really hard to not start using Copilot.

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.

Junk_Collector 2 hours ago|||
Gotta love how they moved the "Create Email/meeting" buttons in Outlook mobile and stuck the Copilot button there so that you will hit it accidentally.
qubex 1 hour ago|||
I’m a Mac user and the only way to get Office 365 is a monthly subscription. Since there’s no subscription that doesn’t include CoPilot and since they hiked the price with the excuse that they’d added this thing I didn’t want, I just cancelled my subscription. A customer lost: hardly an issue, but if enough people do it, maybe they’ll get a clue and stop ramming this unwelcome abomination down our throats.
banannaise 2 hours ago|||
104.3a A player can concede the game at any time.
mindcrime 1 hour ago||
But according to the Birmingham modifications of 1973, subsection 12.b, stroke 7a, a player so conceding is not deemed to have actually conceded unless they be within a finite number of hops from Mornington Crescent station at the time of the concession.
monegator 2 hours ago|||
Like when i went to my github account to withdraw all copilot consents - which i never used anyway

just to be greeted with an email that welcomed me to copilot and the free plan. No button or link to disable the thing.

sgbeal 2 hours ago||
> 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.

xnorswap 2 hours ago||
I doubt it is odd, I suspect almost every ToS has something similar.
Mordisquitos 2 hours ago||
I really hope so. Now I must peruse all ToS that I have agreed in the past to ensure that they have an equivalent clause. I hope I'm not contractually obliged to keep using some random website or whatever for the rest of my life.
osmsucks 9 minutes ago||
To us, all the profit. To you, all the risk.
Raed667 2 hours ago||
a blanket "entertainment only" disclaimer likely wouldn't survive scrutiny for a product actively/relentlessly marketed as a productivity tool
varispeed 1 hour ago|
depends how much judges are interested in bling.
yoyohello13 2 hours ago||
I've been reading Jurassic Park recently. Hammond's monologue about expensive technology only being fundable via Entertainment seems very relevant.
Smalltalker-80 21 minutes ago|
Cool, I'm going to put this disclaimer in my work email signature. So I'm never accountable for any mistakes.
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