Is all AI coded code in the public domain?

Question

AFAIK it's generally assumed (but not(?) tested in court, that LLMs can't be assigned copyright, and that copyright for work generated by LLMs can't be claimed by a human just for being in the loop.Is there going to be an avalanche of code that is legally in the public domain, going forward?

nacozarina · Accepted Answer

most code is protected under trade secret rules, not copyright

adamzwasserman · Answer

In practice this is a non-issue. No production code ships as raw AI output. There's always architectural decisions, integration with existing systems, security reviews, debugging cycles, and business logic validation layered on top. Not to mention massive amounts of yelling and shouting at the AI to get it right. Each of those involves the kind of creative judgment courts have historically recognized as copyrightable contribution.The more interesting question: will companies need to document human contribution to defend copyright claims? That might accidentally improve code review practices.

SamInTheShell · Answer

Not a lawyer, but if you're talking USA, would recommend checking regularly for updates: https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Even if AI output isn't copyrightable, could you really argue a solid case if I taint random parts of the source code with my own isms? Which this is something I do, I don't care if the AI generated portions of my code base are copyrightable, perhaps my licensing is not valid for those portions, but throughout my code is going to be parts I hand crafted or patterned out because the AI just can't get it right. Those snippets are just proverbial land mines in waiting for a copyright infringer in waiting.