If you use AI-generated code, you currently cannot claim copyright on it in the US.
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It'll be interesting to see what happens when a company pisses off an employee to the point where that person creates a public repo containing all the company's AI-generated code. I guarantee what's AI-generated and what's human-written isn't called out anywhere in the code, meaning the entire codebase becomes public domain.
While the company may have recourse based on the employment agreement (which varies in enforceability by state), I doubt there'd be any on the basis of copyright.
@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.
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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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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 I hope this doesn't change. I hope that AI-generated works are never eligible for copyright protection.
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@jamie that's interesting. So I guess #Windows11 will be public domain soon.
@thatdnaguy @jamie
And MacOS Tahoe/iOS26Honestly, I would be happy if they just reverted the whole lot back to Windows 10 and MacOS Sequoia /iOS18.
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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 Microsoft admitted at least 30% of Windows 11 is coded by Copilot. Curious if they are eligible to be open source now, b/c that would be hilarious.
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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
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@jamie gad that guy's chicken little comments really annoyed me (easily annoyed)
I'm thinking that it's more a "which side are you on". Chicken Little said Oh Noes! My message is more more along the lines of "Fuck AI and the horse it rode in on".
(Also an engineer but not LLM user)
@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.
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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 "No thank you." — the public domain
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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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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
CC: @Suiseiseki
