Mastodawn

Don't use LLM generated code in your projects yet! If for no other reason than that the legal case law is NOT ESTABLISHED YET.

I know there was the "copyright laundering" thing that went around a lot, but we actually don't know.

You'll see commenters everywhere on the internet say that "the US Supreme Court ruled that AI generated output is in the public domain". That's misinfo: they *declined to take on* a case from a lower court coming to that conclusion. The US Supreme Court hasn't yet ruled.

And this hasn't shaken out in an international setting yet either.

You may be surprised to hear: I actually think it's more dangerous and empowers centralized AI companies even more if it *isn't* the case that AI output is in the public domain (I'll follow up about that), but regardless, right now we just don't know.

But despite that, I'm STILL saying that you're putting yourself in legally dubious territory right now if you include LLM generated code, for now. We don't know yet.

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Christine Lemmer-Webber Mar 13

That said, I think a lot of people think we can fight AI / LLM output on copyright grounds, and I actually think that's a losing strategy. Copyright almost always helps the big players, and it would here too!

You can see, they're already counting on and hoping it will be the case.

What the big players want is for copyright to apply to AI generated output because then *only* the big players can provide LLM services. See also Sam Altman's "running intelligence as a metered utility" pitch.

And the reason they could do this: *they* can make deals with Disney, Netflix, etc. But open models can't.

But what about all the "little guys" stuff? Well, when you sign that ToS on GitHub, Stack Overflow, DeviantArt, etc etc etc, all those places, you give them a right to your content too.

And THOSE places get to sell your rights.

So fighting on copyright grounds won't be an even playing field. It helps the big AI companies win.

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Christine Lemmer-Webber Mar 13

There are only two strategies which are acceptable: either AI model output is completely illegal because of copyright stuff (this is unlikely to happen because there is now too much money behind it), or AI model output is fully in the public domain, which has its own problems but at least is an even playing field.

There won't be a middle ground that is safe. Because they want something that looks like a "middle ground", but really, all it does is lock in the big players' control over information, forever.

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Dusty Attic

@cwebber Sorry in advance if am stating something obvious, but these two options are not exactly mutually exclusive.

Output can be, in principle, not copyrightable (what it means will likely differ between different flavors of Civil and Common law) and violate copyright at the same time.