I consider GPL as meaning, "don't make the same app as me using this very source code". Cribbing one method out of quarter million line code-base, hardly seems to be redistributing the source code. Literally, it is, but is there no concept scale? Can we go to an extreme and force anyone with a `catch(Exception e)` line in their Java code to go and prove they did not take it from a GPL (or similarly licensed project)? I think this indicates there is a line, at some point it is enough code where you are recreating the functionality of the software - to me that is the thing that matters. I don't give a crap if you use my GPL code to learn from and use any parts of it to build whatever software, but I do care if you recreate the same software using my GPL code.
I would accept a claim of license violation if someone used copilot to autocomplete so many methods from one specific project that you have recreated that original project.
I still think it is a matter of scope. It can still be the case that a relatively small module is not cool to lift, but I think in this case we are still talking about such small subsets of functionality that it is completely divorced from the original software. Like, I could see it if a specific method were really key in some way to a unique application, a very novel solution to a difficult problem - but if that were the case, how can an AI possibly use that for a training model? In other words, the auto-suggestions of an AI are going to be common coding solutions to common coding problems that the AI has seen hundreds of thousands of times. That individual proprietary GPL, unique and novel solution is not really the stuff of an AI suggestion. In other words, the code that co-pilot is going to suggest is going to be non-unique, generic, and not really specific to the overall application at all.
"Ambivalent" means "of two minds," but I'm going to assume you meant that you're indifferent.
If people are/were indifferent, their licenses should reflect that. They overwhelmingly don't.
Regardless, Microsoft is legally bound to obey the licenses.