{"id":558895,"date":"2026-04-01T20:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T20:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/558895\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T20:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T20:58:10","slug":"ask-hackaday-using-copilot-are-you-entertained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/558895\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask Hackaday: Using CoPilot? Are You Entertained?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a great debate these days about what the current crop of AI chatbots should and shouldn\u2019t do for you. We aren\u2019t wise enough to know the answer, but we were interested in hearing what is, apparently, Microsoft\u2019s take on it. Looking at their terms of service for Copilot<\/a>, we read in the original bold:<\/p>\n

Copilot is for entertainment purposes only. It can make mistakes, and it may not work as intended. Don\u2019t rely on Copilot for important advice. Use Copilot at your own risk.<\/p>\n

While that\u2019s good advice, we are pretty sure we\u2019ve seen people use LLMs, including Copilot, for decidedly non-entertaining tasks. But, at least for now, if you are using Copilot for non-entertainment purposes, you are violating the terms of service.<\/p>\n

Legal<\/p>\n

While we know how it is when lawyers get involved in anything, we can\u2019t help but think this is simply a hedge so that when Copilot gives you the wrong directions or a recipe for cake that uses bleach, they can say, \u201cWe told you not to use this for anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

It reminds us of the Prohibition-era product called a grape block. It featured a stern warning on the label that said: \u201cWarning. Do not place product in one quart of water in a cool, dark place for more than two weeks, or else an illegal alcoholic beverage will result.\u201d That doesn\u2019t fool anyone.<\/p>\n

We get it. They are just covering their\u2026 bases. When you do something stupid based on output from Copilot, they can say, \u201cOh, yeah, that was just for entertainment.\u201d But they know what you are doing, and they even encourage it. Heck, they\u2019re doing it themselves<\/a>. Would it stand up in court? We don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

Others<\/p>\n

Now it is true that probably everyone will give you a similar warning. OpenAI, for example, has this to say:<\/p>\n

Output may not always be accurate. You should not rely on Output from our Services as a sole source of truth or factual information, or as a substitute for professional advice.
\nYou must evaluate Output for accuracy and appropriateness for your use case, including using human review as appropriate, before using or sharing Output from the Services.
\nYou must not use any Output relating to a person for any purpose that could have a legal or material impact on that person, such as making credit, educational, employment, housing, insurance, legal, medical, or other important decisions about them.
\nOur Services may provide incomplete, incorrect, or offensive Output that does not represent OpenAI\u2019s views. If Output references any third party products or services, it doesn\u2019t mean the third party endorses or is affiliated with OpenAI.<\/p>\n

Notice that it doesn\u2019t pretend you are only using it for a chuckle. Anthropic has even more wording<\/a>, but still stops short of pretending to be a party game. Copilot, on the other hand, is for fun.<\/p>\n

Your Turn<\/p>\n

How about you? Do you use any of the LLMs for anything other than \u201centertainment?\u201d If you do, how do you validate the responses you get?<\/p>\n

When things do go wrong, who should be liable? There have been court cases where LLM companies have been sued for everything, ranging from users committing suicide<\/a> to defaming<\/a> people. Are the companies behind these tools responsible? Should they be?<\/p>\n

Let us know what you think in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a great debate these days about what the current crop of AI chatbots should and shouldn\u2019t do…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-558895","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}