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Many artists, writers, composers and privacy activists complain that companies are training their AI systems using data that does not belong to them. Now the legality of this practice is being put to the test.

A lawsuit filed in the U.S. in November is believed to be the first legal attack on AI training, according to a story in The New York Times. The lawsuit, which was filed in Los Angeles by Matthew Butterick, a programmer, designer, writer and lawyer, concerns Microsoft ‘s Copilot toolwhich uses a new kind of artificial intelligence technology that can generate its own computer code. Like many cutting-edge AI technologies Copilot developed its skills by analyzing vast amounts of data. In this case, it relied on billions of lines of computer code posted to the Internet. In an interview with The New York Times Butterickequates this process to piracy, because the system does not acknowledge its debt to existing work. His lawsuit claims that Microsoft and its collaborators violated the legal rights of millions of programmers who spent years writing the original code.

Training an AI system on copyrighted material is not necessarily illegal. But doing so could be if the system ends up creating material that is substantially similar to the data it was trained on.Some users of Copilot have said it generates code that seems identical — or nearly identical — to existing programs, an observation that could become the central part of Butterick’s case and others.

Read on to learn more about this story and the week's most important technology news impacting business.

Flatpacks - a key factor in IKEA’s global growth- have revolutionized furniture-making and home furnishing, permitting more stock to be stored in every store, easing transport and democratizing design. Fast forward to 2022 and the kind of inexpensive “fast furniture” that led to IKEA’ success with consumers is clogging landfills and seen as bad for the environment.

It is just one example of how innovations that serve as a core part of a company’s strategy can become a liability as consumer desires and society changes.
IKEA, like many other companies, has adopted sustainability as part of its strategy. It is vowing to become fully circular — using only recycled or renewable materials and creating zero waste — by 2030 and is offerings its clients a way to do the same with offers ranging from solar panels to updateable intelligent furniture. IKEA is also experimenting with refurbishing products, using more recycled materials.
But unlike many other companies, the Swedish home furnishings giant has a strategy to help it avoid getting blindsided by these kind of market shifts. It has an established process for getting ahead of its view of the customer, so it knows where it is going to go five to ten years from now and how that is likely to impact its product development cycle.
IKEA’s secret weapon? SPACE10, an outside research and design lab it invested in that is entirely focused on how changes in society and technology will impact what consumers want.

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Finnish deep tech startup Rocsole, a 2022 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, applies a combination of tomography and AI/neural networks to liquid and solid multiphase flows to enable better process control of pipelines, refineries, or manufacturing production plants. The technology aims to help corporates optimize their processes, streamline their operations, and enable higher levels of energy efficiency. Customers include Shell, Repsol and Syngenta.
Energy production and manufacturing processes together emit more than 50% of GHG emissions. Actionable insights for stable processing have been lacking, causing unexpected shutdowns and higher than normal emissions. Operation teams need relevant data to improve performance and take corrective measures, says CEO Mika Tienhaara, “but 97% of current data is useless. We make the invisible visible.”

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Number of tech startups that have been created by former employees of 344 European and Israeli tech unicorns, according to a new report produced by venture capital firm Accel based on data from Dealroom. French ad tech giant Criteo's alumni created the most so-called second-generation startups (29), followed by Spotify (27), Delivery Hero (27), N26 (24), Klarna (23), Revolut (23), Skype (21), BlaBlaCar (21), Zalando (20) and Wise (19). The report's findings underscore the important role startups play in job creation and economic growth.