The article contradicts itself.

It's important to remember that the purpose of the license is to allow the copyright owner to exercise their rights in a manner they deem fit. Even if they choose to give the code away, that choice is captured in the form of a specifically worded license (MIT, BSD, etc.).

This means that licenses exist because code is copyrightable in the first place, with the license governing the use of said copyright. If AI code is not copyrightable, then no license can govern it.

> If AI code is not copyrightable, then no license can govern it.

This is the crux of the issue. A license controls usage of copyrighted intellectual property. Until the underlying copyright/ip issues are resolved, it seems a moot point to discuss licensing.

That said, if AI code is _not_ copyrightable, does it automatically go into the public domain? Or is there a third category?

> It's important to remember that the purpose of the license is to allow the copyright owner to exercise their rights in a manner they deem fit.

Just as it's important to remember that the purpose of regulations like copyright and patents are to promote the progress of science and the useful arts.

We're not locked in to a suicide pact with what the Founding Fathers decided back in the late 1700s. Congress can decide that all LLM-generated code is automatically covered by -say- the GPLv3, even if no one holds the copyright to it.

If the absence of a particular person to hold the copyright twists your knickers, you could go a bit further and -say- decide that the people of the United States collectively hold the copyright to all LLM-generated code that's generated by US people or entities, and that relicensing of a particular piece of LLM-generated code must be agreed to by every US citizen that was alive when that code was created.