Sometimes code generation is a useful tool, and maybe people have read and reviewed the generator.

The difference here is that the generator is a non-deterministic LLM and you can't reason about its output the same way.

I am not against the general use of AI code. Quite simply, my view is that all relevant context for a review should be disclosed in the PR.

AI and humans are not the same as authors of PRs. As an obvious example: one of the important functions of the PR process is to teach the writer about how to code in this project but LLMs fundamentally don't learn the same way as humans so there's a meaningful difference in context between humans and AIs.

If a human takes the care to really understand and assume authorship of the PR then it's not really an issue (and if they do, they could easily modify the Claude messages to remove "generated by Claude" notes manually) but instead it seems that Claude is just hiding relevant context from the reviewer. PRs without relevant context are always frustrating.

You don't generally commit compiled code to your VCS. If you do need to commit a binary for whatever reason, yeah it makes sense to explain how the binary was generated.

Don't be silly.

I use good ol' C-x M-c M-butterfly.

https://xkcd.com/378/

My last commit is literally authored by dependabot.

well if I know a specific LLM has certain tendencies (eg. some model is likely to introduce off-by-one errors), I would know what to look for in code-review

I mean, of course I would read most of the code during review, but as a human, I often skip things by mistake

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A linter or a formatter does not open you up to compliance and copyright issues.

Like frying a veggie burger in bacon grease. Just because somebody's beliefs are dumb doesn't mean we should be deliberately tricking them. If they want to opt out of your code, let them.

Linters and formatters are different tools then LLMs. There is a general understanding that linters and formatters don’t alter the behavior of your program. And even still most projects require a particular linter and a formatter to pass before a PR is accepted, and will flag a PR as part of the CI pipeline if a particular linter or a particular formatter fails on the code you wrote. This particular linter and formatter is very likely to be mentioned somewhere in the configuration or at least in the README of the project.

The reason I want it to be marked as such is because I review AI code differently than human code - it just makes different kinds of mistakes.

You can disclose that you used an LLM in the process of writing code in other ways, though. You can just tell people, you can mention it in the PR, you can mention it in a ticket, etc.

So if I use Claude to write the first pass at the code, make a few changes myself, ask it to make an additional change, change another thing myself, then commit it — what exactly do you expect to see then?

I guess if enough people use it, doesn’t the tag become kind of redundant?

Almost like writing “Code was created with the help of IntelliSense”.

Pre-LLM, it was much easier for reviewers to discern that. Now, the AI-generated code can look like it was well thought out by somebody competent, when it wasn't.

Yes and if they copy and paste code they don’t understand then they should disclose that in the commit message too!

>legally speaking.. if you're not sure of the risk- you don't document it.

Ah, so you kinda maybe sorta absolve yourself of culpability (but not really — "I didn't know this was copyrighted material" didn't grant you copyright), and simultaneously make fixing the potentially compromised codebase (someone else's job, hopefully) 100x harder because the history of which bits might've been copied was never kept.

Solid advice! As ethical as it is practical.

By the same measure, junkyards should avoid keeping receipts on the off chance that the catalytic converters some randos bring in after midnight are stolen property.

Better not document it.

One little trick the legal folks don't want you to know!

It's beyond obvious that a LLM cannot have copyright, any more than a cat or a rock can. The question is whether anyone has or if whatever content generated by a LLM simply does not constitute a work and is thus outside the entire copyright law. As far as I can see, it depends on the extent of the user's creative effort in controlling the LLM's output.

>Where is there any legal precedent for that?

Thaler v. Perlmutter: The D.C. Circuit Court affirmed in March 2025 that the Copyright Act requires works to be authored "in the first instance by a human being," a ruling the Supreme Court left intact by declining to hear the case in 2026.

And in the US constitution,

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8...

Authors and inventors, courts have ruled, means people. Only people. A monkey taking a selfie with your camera doesn't mean you own a copyright. An AI generating code with your computer is likewise, devoid of any copyright protection.

Using work equipment for a personal project only matters because you signed a contract giving all of your IP to your employer for anything you did with (or sometimes without) your employer's equipment.

Anthropic's user agreement does not have a similar agreement.

I think all you need to do is claim that your girlfriend is your laptop. /s