Comments

• ralf Member

  May 9 edited May 9

  @stable_genius said:

  @ralf said:

  @stable_genius said:

  @ralf said:

  @stable_genius said:

  @TimboJones said:

  @stable_genius said:

  @TimboJones said:

  @stable_genius said:
  I wonder if people here are aware that all code produced using an LLM based AI goes automatically into the Public Domain and you can't add ANY license to a public domain work.

  Public Domain works are intrinsically non copyrightable.

  Yes, the whole world agreed to that one morning.

  /s

  You need help.

  The output of an LLM based AI has no copyright owner because it not original work authored by a human as required by law. The "original work authored by a human" requirement is the cornerstone of copyright law.

  Works with no active owner or expired copyright are in the public domain, allowing free public use without permission, payment, or license.

  A copyright owner is the creator (author) or entity (employer, publisher) that holds the exclusive legal rights to an original work, including reproduction, distribution, adaptation, and public display.

  Depends on the country. But IANAL.

  Depends primarily on the level of human creative input involved in their creation, rather than the technology used to generate them.

  You may copywrite the prompts but not the output of the LLM, the output will be in the Public Domain..

  That's not true.

  AFAIK, the only country that has made any kind of ruling is the US, and that was in the specific case of somebody trying to assert copyright over an obviously AI generated image.

  If it wasn't AI generated, or even if the artist had done some later modifications to the image that were in some way transformative, the resultant work would be covered by copyright - but they potentially wouldn't be able to stop someone recreating a very similar image using AI. I say potentially, because realistically with no way for them to recreate the intermediate image, it's most likely that any derivative work would be being made from the copyrighted image, and so subject to regular copyright laws.

  For code, it's even more of a gray area - it's unlikely that anyone will ever release a 100% vibe coded app as closed source, and so any form of reverse engineering an app that you suspect was largely AI generated would be probably illegal as you'd have no way of knowing if the particular part you're copying was generated by AI or a human. And given that I think most people would only use AI to help with development, nowhere close to 100%, effectively that means that every app would de-facto be covered by copyright.

  So essentially if you release the source for something and say it's "100% vibe coded", you probably won't be successful pursuing someone for copyright infringement in the US. If you claimed authorship of the software, even admitting that AI helped with some areas, you can claim full copyright of the software, because the onus would be on the person copying your source to prove that the parts they copied were 100% AI generated. In almost every case, that'd be impossible.

  To sum up what you wrote: AI generated code belongs to everyone since anyone can freely use AI to regenerate it and call it their own. As it belongs to everyone then it's in the Public Domain, by definition. Elementary, my dear Watson, I'd say.

  Stop using AI and learn to read. That's the complete opposite of what I wrote.

  Anyone will be able to regenerate (not)your code and call it their own!!!

  If somebody can generate exactly the same code as you using AI, they have a way to prove they didn't infringe your copyright. It's very unlikely, however, that you will get AI to produce an exact copy of something without giving it that thing as a source input. If you do that, you'll be breaking copyright.

  How on earth will you copywrite that code in good faith? And why would anyone want to???

  It's copyright.

  I see you replied to my "It's copyright" and then just carried on showing your ignorance by continuing to spell it wrong multiple times.

  It is a RIGHT that you have by virtue of creating something. It's not a WRITE, because WRITE is a verb.

  And if you only use AI as a tool to create part of that code, of course you can assert copyright over the composite work.

  The reasons you'd want to are obvious.

  Besides, AI regurgitated code is an unmaintainable mess, what kind of idiot would ever reuse code regurgitated for someone else instead of simply having AI regurgitate it directly for them?

  Caveat - I've never used AI code generation, only watched a friend give me a demo. The code it produced didn't look awful to me.

  How do you prove you are not the one infringing the other guy's copywrite?

  What the hell are you talking about?

  If I produce software and release a binary of it, and someone copies it, I can obviously prove that I have the copyright because I have the source code and the git repository to show how it was developed over time.

  The onus is on both, it goes both ways!

  Your laxed attitude towards copyright and licensing is amusing, you can't mix/merge/pick/unpick/whatever conflicting licenses at your own discretion and stay legal.

  If you write code you can choose whatever licence you want. You own the copyright automatically.

  If you use an AI tool, under most jurisdictions you would still own the copyright on the output. And even if those that don't, only the very small parts created by AI would by uncopyrightable. Merging them into a copyrighted work is covered by copyright as it creates a new work. Exactly the same as if I took a book that is now in the public domain and rewrote chunks of it to change the story - people couldn't copy my modified version, but they could continue to copy from the original.

  Now, even in a jurisdiction that doesn't permit copyright on AI generated work, if I release some work that is mostly hand-coded and with some parts by AI, nobody looking at the binary would have any idea what was written by me and what was written by AI. It would be impossible for somebody to try to take some fragment of the binary and claim that part was permissible to copy, because to do that they'd need the output of the AI work to be able to prove that it was legal for them to copy that part. But they don't have that, they just have the final product that is a composite of my work and AI work. And again, that would in any case count as a transformative work, so the final product would be copyrightable.

  If you are going to argue about copyright law, you should at least educate yourself with the basics of it. And learn how to spell it.

  There is no copywrite for AI generated code, AI generated code is a smorgasbord of licensing violations!

  Incorrect. In ONE jurisdiction it has been declared uncopyrightable, and it hasn't been tested in others. And that ONE jurisdiction was only tested in the case of work that was entirely generated by AI, not where AI was used for part of a larger work.

  I can see I trapped you into cognitive dissonance, I didn't mean to, I'm sorry!

  You have done no such thing. You seem to not even understand the basics of copyright law.

  And finally, as I said at the beginning, I haven't even used AI yet, only looked at some code produced when a friend demo'd it to me.
• ralf Member

  May 9 edited May 9

  @stable_genius said:

  The onus is on both, it goes both ways!

  Your laxed attitude towards copyright and licensing is amusing, you can't mix/merge/pick/unpick/whatever conflicting licenses at your own discretion and stay legal.

  There is no copywrite for AI generated code, AI generated code is a smorgasbord of licensing violations!

  And just to respond to this one point again as it's important.

  By your own argument, using an AI tool to generate something would produce a work that is free of copyright (again, that's NOT true, it's only for specific works generated entirely by AI and in one jurisdiction, but again, this is what you are arguing).

  If that output has no copyright at all, ANYBODY is free to incorporate it into any other work they like, at which point the resultant work is considered transformative and covered by copyright.

  I can see I trapped you into cognitive dissonance, I didn't mean to, I'm sorry!

  It's actually you trapped in cognitive dissonance because you believe one thing (AI generated work is free of copyright), whilst arguing the opposite (that the result can't be used because it "is a smorgasbord of licensing violations"). It can't be both.
• stable_genius Member

  May 9

  @ralf said:
  If you use an AI tool, under most jurisdictions you would still own the copyright on the output. And even if those that don't, only the very small parts created by AI would by uncopyrightable. Merging them into a copyrighted work is covered by copyright as it creates a new work. Exactly the same as if I took a book that is now in the public domain and rewrote chunks of it to change the story - people couldn't copy my modified version, but they could continue to copy from the original.

  Adding snippets of AI generated code into a mature project is one thing but using AI to jumpstart a new project is a whole different matter.

  Snippets of AI generated code incorporated into mature projects are mostly inconsequential, the vim editor is accepting AI generated code additions, I doubt it will make any significant difference.

  Now jumpstarting new projects using AI.. that will only make a mess.