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by OutOfHere 102 days ago
Why is "AI-generated code" not also "AI art"? What makes "AI-generated code" copyrightable then? Nothing! Being that everything will be made using AI in the future, the courts just suicided the copyright system! Or where exactly does art end and code begin? The same applies to documents and designs.

If I take your AI-generated code file and write it as an artsy-looking image, do I get to deny you copyright?

3 comments

No-one has checked in court of AI-generated code is copyrightable.

Personally I hope it's not. To me, this is the best outcome for AI in general. If we are going to violate everyone's copyright training AIs, then it's only fair you don't get AI protection on the output.

> Why is "AI-generated code" not also "AI art"?

It is, and if you did what the actor in this case did with code (tried to register a copyright on a piece of code disclaiming any human authorship and claiming an AI tool as the sole author) it would also not be copyrightable.

This case does not actually address what people are actually mostly interested in with copyrightability of works made by humans with the assistance of AI tools, where the human running the tool is claiming authorship, because that was not what happened that was being fought over here.

it's about copyrighted content

so yes it applies to fully AI-generated code as much as to "AI art".

like with AI assisted art it doesn't apply to AI assisted coding

and yes if everything is fully AI generate there is no copyright anymore, that is by design!

Copyright is there to protect human creativity/time investment. If there is no creativity/time investment, then there is no reason for copyright to exist either. Having still copyright there would mean moving it from a law to protect creative work to a law to protect the privileged few which can afford to just mass generate "everything" with AI. That isn't just very undesirable, it's kinda plain evil, as it would mean screwing over the majority of humanity.

Naturally as mentioned that only applies to full AI products, not to AI assisted products in which case the "human contribution" and thinks resulting from it still have copyright.