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by jmclnx 2 days ago
I do not see how AI could be legally used on a GPL project.

But if you want to use a non-AI OS, NetBSD banned the use of AI. Maybe some of the talent will move over there. They can sure use the help.

As for AI in Linux, I am on the fence about that, but since Linux is pretty much funded/owned by large corporations, AI being forced on Linux is no surprise at all.

1 comments

Are you a lawyer or an interlectual-property legal expert?

Because if so, please, please elaborate on

> I do not see how AI could be legally used on a GPL project.

Too many people "believe" or "are convinced" about matters with AI and Open Source without any backup or sources.

As I stated in another comment;

when you license code under the GNU GPLv2 (as you are doing whenever you contribute to the kernel), you are making an overt intellectual property claim. Unless you include attribution back to another GNU GPLv2 (or compatible) source that you are copying from, you are asserting that all the code you've just contributed is work that you have a the full legal copy-right to distribute and (re-)license.

However, if non-trivial code contributions are made by LLMs, that cannot be ensured (even if the user intends for it to be the case), as LLMs will never be able to consistently and correctly attribute the source of their code (not to mention a lot of it was illegal to train on to begin with but that's besides the point).

An LLM could very easily reproduce code from a project which is incompatible with the GNU GPLv2, and not only will it be illegally integrated into the kernel source, but the contributor is actually falsely claiming it as their own original work.

> Are you a lawyer or an intellectual-property legal expert?

Appeal to authority - we are free to comment on this matter irrespective of our vocation/education.

I'm not a lawyer, but based on everything I've read on the topic I think there's a solid argument that there are legitimate questions about the use of copyrighted material in training data, and whether or not the output of an LLM should be considered a derived work. As I googled it, it seems like courts have mostly called it OK but maybe this matter isn't 100% settled or converged upon a single answer.
Because you can't slap a copyright on AI output.
It's because, at least in the US, AI generated code cannot be protected by copyright.

<https://www.copyright.gov/ai/>

<https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...>

  The Office concludes that, given current generally available technology, prompts alone do not provide sufficient human control to make users of an AI system the authors of the output.
I'm not a lawyer either but if/when something like this goes to court the conclusion of the US Copyright Office is probably going to play a part.
What I was able to skim is a bit more complex like that. Page 42 of Part 2 says using it "as a tool" produces copyrightable works:

> As described above, in many circumstances these outputs will be copyrightable in whole or in part—where AI is used as a tool, and where a human has been able to determine the expressive elements they contain. Prompts alone, however, at this stage are unlikely to satisfy those requirements.

Then, since this stuff is changing a lot, they hedge with:

> The Office continues to monitor technological and legal developments to evaluate any need for a different approach.