Sandbar_Trekker

You’re cutting out the important context with that quote:

Occasionally I’ll have it write more substantial code for me, usually for bug fixes, and occasionally for small features. I find it does a pretty decent job here, but I keep it on manual mode and often ask it to write the code in a different way, or take a different approach.

That doesn’t sound like someone who’s just blindly copying and pasting whatever an LLM told them to do. I agree there’s absolutely a risk with using LLM generated code that could cause some copyright issues. But the way he’s using it sounds like it minimizes that risk.

The Licensing Problem It doesn’t sound like the way the dev is using the LLM would make this a high risk issue. He’s mostly using it for testing/brainstorming/pseudo code rather than generating code to use directly.

The title of this post is incredibly misleading and I can tell you didn’t read how it’s actually being used. The dev mostly isn’t using the LLM for code generation. There wouldn’t be any “potentially unattributed plagiarism landmines” to worry about.

Edit: The dev does use the code in some cases, see below.

I think you meant LLM tools?
If you’re meaning all AI tools then that also includes anything ML related. Accessibility tools such as Speech to Text models, Text to Speech models. Research tools such as those used to virtually unravel and read heavily damaged or incredibly fragile ancient scrolls, tools to help detect exoplanets, or tools for discovering cures to diseases. And more.

Certainly looks interesting, but I have to mention that I’m not a fan of the Discord Rich Presence feature. The directory access that this typically requires immediately bumps up any flatpak to a medium risk category.

Granted I’m definitely one of those users that does not care to share my current status to all other users as to what I’m watching/listening to at every moment.

That article completely practically skips over the section in the report that says that copyright can be applied by compilation to an overall work. See section II - F: “Modifying or Arranging AI-Generated Content”

Or you can also just skip to the conclusion of the actual report itself:

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.
https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-2-Copyrightability-Report.pdf

Edit: The article you linked does mention that the works can be copyrighted as a whole, but it does not mention this in the conclusion.

According to the U.S. Copyright Office, it absolutely can, but it depends on how much control the user exerts on the final product.

If a single prompt was used and they copy pasted the entire thing, then yes, as you have said, it is not copyrightable.

However, if multiple prompts were used and the end result is compiled/arranged with enough direction by the end user, then it can be copyrighted by compilation.

Generating content with AI is often an initial or intermediate step, and human authorship may be added in the final product. As explained in the AI Registration Guidance, “a human may select or arrange AI-generated material in a sufficiently creative way that ‘the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship.’”¹²⁶ A human may also “modify material originally generated by AI technology to such a degree that the modifications meet the standard for copyright protection.”¹²⁷

As several commenters noted, human authors should be able to claim copyright if they select, coordinate, and arrange AI-generated material in a creative way.¹²⁸ This would provide protection for the output as a whole (although not the AI-generated material alone).¹²⁹ A relatively common scenario in registration applications is the combination of human-authored text with AI-generated images. In one early case, for instance, the Office found that the selection and arrangement of AI-generated images with human-authored text in a comic book were protectable as a compilation.

https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-2-Copyrightability-Report.pdf