Mastodawn

I have what may be a very ignorant question: if model-generated code may not be copyrighted due to a requirement of human authorship (current US Copyright Office policy), does it therefore follow that model-generated code may not be licensed under any terms whatsoever? Meaning anything from MIT to GPLv3?

I recognize no answers here would constitute legal advice, but I would love to hear from legal experts on this.

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Michael Terry 10h ago

@mttaggart if you modify the code, you own copyright to your modifications and can license the combined package of generated code and your code.

“[H]uman authors should be able to claim copyright if they
select, coordinate, and arrange AI-generated material in a creative way. This would provide
protection for the output as a whole (although not the AI-generated material alone).”

From pdf page 32 of part 2 of this US report on copyright and AI: https://www.copyright.gov/policy/artificial-intelligence/

Artificial Intelligence Study | U.S. Copyright Office

Artificial Intelligence Study

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Taggart

@mikix That's super interesting. So a codebase that was generative, then heavily refactored by human hands is eligible. That makes sense! But anything that is mostly generative would still seem to lack copyright protections.