If you use AI-generated code, you currently cannot claim copyright on it in the US.
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@grechaw I'd legitimately love if generating code with AI became too large a risk for companies to take on. It’s the outcome most likely to exquisitely satisfy the schadenfreude I feel toward the rich.
@jamie exactly! It's not "the sky is falling" but rather "stop your [maybe probably illegal] grift, assholes."
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If you use AI-generated code, you currently cannot claim copyright on it in the US. If you fail to disclose/disclaim exactly which parts were not written by a human, you forfeit your copyright claim on *the entire codebase*.
This means copyright notices and even licenses folks are putting on their vibe-coded GitHub repos are unenforceable. The AI-generated code, and possibly the whole project, becomes public domain.
Source: https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/LSB/PDF/LSB10922/LSB10922.8.pdf
@jamie Yeah, I love that the asshole who won a juried painting show with AI Slop from Midjourney years ago whines all the time that he can't copyright his "work".
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@jamie I *am* an IP lawyer and I (along with many others) have been saying it for a while, that if the position the “AI” co’s are taking with respect to the legality of scraping “publicly available” materials were true (that all “publicly available” materials are “public domain” free to be used as raw materials without consent required), then copyright ceases to exist and all their own materials will be free for everyone else to use the very first time they’re leaked. That’ll be fun for the co.
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@jamie not sure this is right based on my understanding. The things you quoted are about copyright registration, not copyright ownership. If I write a book, I own the copyright to that even if I never register it. If it was subsequently published with an ai generated appendix, I can’t see it invalidating the copyright on the non ai work. I’m not a lawyer either so I could be wrong.
@starr I did notice it specifically mentions registration, but I thought copyright registration is necessary to enforce your copyright. Is that not correct?
Like, it needs to be confirmed that you indeed own the copyright before infringement of that copyright can be determined. Registration of the copyright is probably the single best way to do that and, if you don’t register it, my first line of questioning would be why you didn’t.
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@starr I did notice it specifically mentions registration, but I thought copyright registration is necessary to enforce your copyright. Is that not correct?
Like, it needs to be confirmed that you indeed own the copyright before infringement of that copyright can be determined. Registration of the copyright is probably the single best way to do that and, if you don’t register it, my first line of questioning would be why you didn’t.
@starr I’m open to being wrong on this. I’m not an expert and I’ve only got the legal opinions of my siblings (who are lawyers) to go on.
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@starr I’m open to being wrong on this. I’m not an expert and I’ve only got the legal opinions of my siblings (who are lawyers) to go on.
@starr Sorry, it occurred to me that that could come across as sarcastic. I mean that law is not cut and dry, and opinions of specific people factor into every legal decision.
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@blogdiva @fsinn @jamie not a lawyer but deciding to weigh in regardless for some reason: the legal existence of trade secrets does not seem to be directly threatened by the legal methodology being advanced by these corporations in the same way as it directly opposes the basis of copyright infringement (also see hachette vs IA for an attempt to develop new precedent which also failed). however precisely as you say it may as a practical matter become more difficult to lay claim to the actions of a particular employee for breaching contract terms regarding trade secrets if the employer also subscribes to espionage as a service
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@jamie I *am* an IP lawyer and I (along with many others) have been saying it for a while, that if the position the “AI” co’s are taking with respect to the legality of scraping “publicly available” materials were true (that all “publicly available” materials are “public domain” free to be used as raw materials without consent required), then copyright ceases to exist and all their own materials will be free for everyone else to use the very first time they’re leaked. That’ll be fun for the co.
@fsinn @jamie My understanding was that training an AI model on copyrighted work was fair use, because the actual "distribution"--when the AI generates something from a prompt--uses a diminimus amount of copyrighted content from an individual work, except if the user explicitly prompted something like, "Give me Homer Simpson surfing a space orca," at which point the AI company would throw the user all the way under the bus.
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@atax1a This is the most incredible clapback I've seen all day. Flawless. No notes.
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If you use AI-generated code, you currently cannot claim copyright on it in the US. If you fail to disclose/disclaim exactly which parts were not written by a human, you forfeit your copyright claim on *the entire codebase*.
This means copyright notices and even licenses folks are putting on their vibe-coded GitHub repos are unenforceable. The AI-generated code, and possibly the whole project, becomes public domain.
Source: https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/LSB/PDF/LSB10922/LSB10922.8.pdf
@jamie@zomglol.wtf this means a lot of windows 11 is public domain right?
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@starr Sorry, it occurred to me that that could come across as sarcastic. I mean that law is not cut and dry, and opinions of specific people factor into every legal decision.
@jamie no worries, it didn’t come across that way. Your sibling could easily know something I don’t. I just suspect it’s more complicated than the presence of ai code canceling out any copyright claims on adjacent code. Now that I think about it, do companies even register copyright for their code? I’ve personally never seen it done. It would mean that anyone could go to the library of congress and see it I believe. I’ve only done books but I had to send them a pdf.
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@fsinn @jamie My understanding was that training an AI model on copyrighted work was fair use, because the actual "distribution"--when the AI generates something from a prompt--uses a diminimus amount of copyrighted content from an individual work, except if the user explicitly prompted something like, "Give me Homer Simpson surfing a space orca," at which point the AI company would throw the user all the way under the bus.
@Azuaron @fsinn The argument has been that the model doesn't contain the copyrighted works directly. Like, you can't grep the model file on disk for a passage from a book it can still somehow reproduce.
It's a ridiculous argument, though, because the models deal in numbers, not text. Those numbers are converted to text for human consumption only, so of course it won't contain the raw text anywhere in the model.
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If you use AI-generated code, you currently cannot claim copyright on it in the US. If you fail to disclose/disclaim exactly which parts were not written by a human, you forfeit your copyright claim on *the entire codebase*.
This means copyright notices and even licenses folks are putting on their vibe-coded GitHub repos are unenforceable. The AI-generated code, and possibly the whole project, becomes public domain.
Source: https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/LSB/PDF/LSB10922/LSB10922.8.pdf
@jamie well that's certainly an imaginative way to disarm GPL
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If you use AI-generated code, you currently cannot claim copyright on it in the US. If you fail to disclose/disclaim exactly which parts were not written by a human, you forfeit your copyright claim on *the entire codebase*.
This means copyright notices and even licenses folks are putting on their vibe-coded GitHub repos are unenforceable. The AI-generated code, and possibly the whole project, becomes public domain.
Source: https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/LSB/PDF/LSB10922/LSB10922.8.pdf
@jamie this is kind of funny.
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@jamie no worries, it didn’t come across that way. Your sibling could easily know something I don’t. I just suspect it’s more complicated than the presence of ai code canceling out any copyright claims on adjacent code. Now that I think about it, do companies even register copyright for their code? I’ve personally never seen it done. It would mean that anyone could go to the library of congress and see it I believe. I’ve only done books but I had to send them a pdf.
@starr I'll have to ask. We didn't get into these kinds of details when we talked about it.
It's definitely more complicated than AI-generated code infecting copyright GPL-style. More that you can't claim copyright on the AI-generated code, so if you don't disclaim the AI-generated code, your copyright won't be recognized. There may also be a lot more dirty details to it that could sway a decision one way or another.
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@starr I'll have to ask. We didn't get into these kinds of details when we talked about it.
It's definitely more complicated than AI-generated code infecting copyright GPL-style. More that you can't claim copyright on the AI-generated code, so if you don't disclaim the AI-generated code, your copyright won't be recognized. There may also be a lot more dirty details to it that could sway a decision one way or another.
@starr Also, are the full contents of all registered copyrights visible at the Library of Congress? I assumed that was patents only but I used to get copyright and patents confused a lot and this may be one of those things I've been carrying incorrectly in my mind.
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If you use AI-generated code, you currently cannot claim copyright on it in the US. If you fail to disclose/disclaim exactly which parts were not written by a human, you forfeit your copyright claim on *the entire codebase*.
This means copyright notices and even licenses folks are putting on their vibe-coded GitHub repos are unenforceable. The AI-generated code, and possibly the whole project, becomes public domain.
Source: https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/LSB/PDF/LSB10922/LSB10922.8.pdf
@jamie The same goes in Finland. Machine is not a natural person (obviously) and copyright can be granted only to a natural human being - not to an organisation, not to a system. This is by law.
Anything coming out of LLMs’ is free for any use by anyone. It is merely a matter of access to this content.
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Hi @tuban_muzuru , totally with you that this is a deeply wrong, misguided "sky is falling" take; purely speculative, since there are no court rulings related to *code* anywhere in the vicinity of:
"used AI, therefore, *poof* it's legal to open source it!"
edit: at the same time, absolutely, LLMs were not ethically trained. But ethics != judicial systems.
But hey, @jamie , enjoy your popcorn regardless
@dusk @tuban_muzuru @jamie 2nded. I certainly appreciated it. I considered Tuban's perspective from a big tech position. Google would be contributing to their own IP risk. Since their legal team hasn't been lit on fire, I agree there might be nuance.
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If you use AI-generated code, you currently cannot claim copyright on it in the US. If you fail to disclose/disclaim exactly which parts were not written by a human, you forfeit your copyright claim on *the entire codebase*.
This means copyright notices and even licenses folks are putting on their vibe-coded GitHub repos are unenforceable. The AI-generated code, and possibly the whole project, becomes public domain.
Source: https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/LSB/PDF/LSB10922/LSB10922.8.pdf
I'm surprised this isn't obvious. No, no, I'm not.
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FWIW I'm not a lawyer and I'm not recommending that you do this.
Even if companies have no legal standing on copyright, their legal team will try it. It *will* cost you money.But man, oh man, I'm gonna have popcorn ready for when someone inevitably pulls this move.
Can’t wait!!
