Didn't a court in the US declare that AI generated content cannot be copyrighted? I think that could be a problem for AI generated code. Fine for projects with an MIT/BSD license I suppose, but GPL relies on copyright.

However, if the code has been slightly changed by a human, it can be copyrighted again. I think.

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simonw 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Thaler v. Perlmutter said that an AI system cannot be listed as the sole author of a work - copyright requires a human author.

US Copyright Office guidance in 2023 said work created with the help of AI can be registered as long as there is "sufficient human creative input". I don't believe that has ever been qualified with respect to code, but my instinct is that the way most people use coding agents (especially for something like kernel development) would qualify.

	▲	davemp 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Interesting. That seems to suggest that one would need to retain the prompts in order to pursue copyright claims if a defendant can cast enough doubt on human authorship. Though I guess such a suit is unlikely if the defendant could just AI wash the work in the first place.

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tadfisher 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No, a court did not declare that. The case involved a person trying to register a work with only the AI system listed as author. The Supreme Court decided that you can't do that, you need to list a human being as author to register a work with the Copyright Office. This stems from existing precedent where someone tried to register a photograph with the monkey photographer listed as author.

I don't believe the idea that humans can or can't claim copyright over AI-authored works has been tested. The Copyright Office says your prompt doesn't count and you need some human-authored element in the final work. We'll have to see.

	▲	papercrane an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's almost a certainty that you can't copyright code that was generated entirely by an AI. Copyright requires some amount of human originality. You could copyright the prompt, and if you modify the generated code you can claim copyright on your modifications. The closest applicable case would be the monkey selfie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...
	▲	manwe150 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I’m curious to see if subscription vs free ends up mattering here. If it is a work for hire, generally it doesn’t matter how the work was produced, the end result is mine, because I contracted and instructed (prompted?) someone to do it for me. So will the copyright office decide it cares if I paid for the AI tool explicitly?

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RussianCow 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Didn't a court in the US declare that AI generated content cannot be copyrighted?

No, my understanding is that AI generated content can't be copyrighted by the AI. A human can still copyright it, however.

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singpolyma3 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Public domain code is GPL compatible