> Generative AI for source code learns from developers - who mostly publish their source with licenses that allow this.

I always believed GPL allowed LLM training, but only if the counterparty fulfills its conditions: attribution (even if not for every output, at least as part of the training set) and virality (the resulting weights and inference/training code should be released freely under GPL, or maybe even the outputs). I have not seen any AI company take any steps to fulfill these conditions to legally use my work.

The profiteering alone would be a sufficient harm, but it's the replacement rhetoric that adds insult to injury.

This cuts to the bone of it tbqh. One large wing of the upset over gen AI is the _unconsenting, unlicensed, uncredited, and uncompensated_ use of assets to make "you can't steal a style" a newly false statement.

There are artists who would (and have) happily consented, licensed, and been compensated and credited for training. If that's what LLM trainers had led with when they went commercial, if anything a sector of the creative industry would've at least considered it. But companies led with mass training for profit without giving back until they were caught being sloppy (in the previous usage of "slop").