GitHub Rolls Out Enterprise Copilot Plan Amid Ongoing Copyright Lawsuits
GitHub launches a $19 per user per month business tier for its AI coding assistant, adding corporate policy controls to block public code suggestions. The release coincides with an unresolved class-action lawsuit over the tool's use of copyrighted training data.
GitHub introduces a new Copilot for Business plan that costs $19 per user per month, expanding its AI-powered coding assistant beyond individual users and educators. The enterprise tier includes all standard features but adds corporate licensing and specialized policy controls designed to give IT administrators greater oversight over how the tool operates within their organizations.
A key feature of the business plan is a toggle that allows administrators to prevent the AI from suggesting code that directly matches public code repositories on GitHub. This addition serves as a direct response to the intellectual property controversies surrounding the service, which relies on OpenAI's Codex model trained on billions of lines of public source code.
Despite these new guardrails, significant legal questions remain unresolved as Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI currently face a class-action lawsuit accusing them of copyright violation. Critics argue that the tool regurgitates licensed code without proper attribution, and legal experts warn that companies using the software potentially risk unknowingly incorporating copyrighted materials into their commercial products.