My understanding (belief) is that it's going to depend on how much human involvement is there.
If you write a prompt and one-shot a problem and share the source code, that source code is probably not covered by copyright.
If you substantially edit or modify the generated code you would own the copyright.
It's like with a camera. If I set a camera and carefully aim it and somehow trigger the shutter then make adjustments in Photoshop, I own the copyright on that image.
If I stick a Flock camera on a pole somewhere and post the live output, there's been no meaningful human creative involvement in producing those images and so nobody can claim copyright on them.
I think if I as a human use an llm to do something technical that would qualify copyright, it should still qualify for copyright. How do you decide how much human is copyrightable. If I use a package that writes code or use a library for some piece of it, I could still copyright.
I don't like this idea that llm code can't be owned by a human, copyrighted. It's just code.
I think your last example with flock camera is relevant here - I can take a picture of a public football as a reporter or something (or a fan I guess) and I can copyright and sell that picture. Newspapers do it every day.
So if I stand on a street corner and take a pic, it's copyrightable. If I take a pic using a flock camera it should also be copyrightable, just like if my nest camera at home takes a pic of something, I can use that.
I guess you are saying "someone else owns the flock camera" so you don't get to own pictures. What if I buy the flock-like camera and put it up, I should own that.
You seem to have misunderstood an is/ought distinction. You may hold the (fairly extreme, as far as copyright goes) position that surveillance footage should be subject to copyright, but it's well established that it's not. Who owns the camera is irrelevant. At least in the US; I'm not aware of any jurisdictions that hold otherwise. This is why Wikipedia articles on world events in the past few decades are full of stills from surveillance cameras: it's one of the few sources of imagery of an event that are unambiguously legal to include, because unlike a photo or intentionally made video of something specific, it's not a creative work. It's also pretty firmly established that human authorship is required for something to be subject to copyright, and having an idea that lead to some particular expression is itself not sufficient; see, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...
I appreciate your informed take. I follow the reasoning but I am amazed it works this way. I found some articles that supported what you said, and also said there's a follow-on industry that figured out how to alter and edit videos just enough for a revised video to have creative contribution and make it copyrightable.
This is a great case to study, but no determination of copyright was made. The only actual lawsuit was filed by PETA arguing that the monkey should have copyright, which led to a settlement with the human photographer and nothing else because obviously that's not possible.
For various reasons (mostly $$$) the guy never actually got a judgement. I think the chances are good that he could have prevailed in court; there is significant creative input to setting up cameras and triggers in a way to convince a wild monkey to take a selfie. It's not like he just left his camera sitting somewhere on accident and came back to find a photo in it.
I'm also not a lawyer, but I did do a lot of work in copyright for a company you've heard about.
> If you write a prompt and one-shot a problem and share the source code, that source code is probably not covered by copyright.
We will have to see about that! This is the kind of boundary that's still being figured out in court; it's going to depend on how hard you worked on the prompt. I highly doubt that even most slop was generated with a single half-ass prompt, and the bar is not as high as you might expect.
> If I stick a Flock camera on a pole somewhere and post the live output, there's been no meaningful human creative involvement in producing those images and so nobody can claim copyright on them.
It really depends on what pole, where, and why. In a parking lot in rural Wisconsin? Probably not. A recorded livestream of a political march? You likely have copyright.
I think that by virtue of the sheer amount of time spent using AI tools, it's pretty clear that these outputs have enough creative input to be copyrightable.
No, that’s not what they are saying. They’re saying that the code generated by a human with help from an LLM may potentially be. This is what I hope we are going to arrive at, eventually.
How could you establish what parts of the code was produced by an LLM vs updated by a human afterwards?
The LLM will output different results over time as the models get updated. Are we heading towards needing to retain a full prompt history that can be replayed against a specific LLM model version to prove what the output was for copyright purposes?
For those wondering what the difference is: consider what happens when an LLM regurgitates its training data. It's copyrighted... but not by the person who generated it.
My understanding (belief) is that it's going to depend on how much human involvement is there.
If you write a prompt and one-shot a problem and share the source code, that source code is probably not covered by copyright.
If you substantially edit or modify the generated code you would own the copyright.
It's like with a camera. If I set a camera and carefully aim it and somehow trigger the shutter then make adjustments in Photoshop, I own the copyright on that image.
If I stick a Flock camera on a pole somewhere and post the live output, there's been no meaningful human creative involvement in producing those images and so nobody can claim copyright on them.
I think if I as a human use an llm to do something technical that would qualify copyright, it should still qualify for copyright. How do you decide how much human is copyrightable. If I use a package that writes code or use a library for some piece of it, I could still copyright.
I don't like this idea that llm code can't be owned by a human, copyrighted. It's just code.
I think your last example with flock camera is relevant here - I can take a picture of a public football as a reporter or something (or a fan I guess) and I can copyright and sell that picture. Newspapers do it every day.
So if I stand on a street corner and take a pic, it's copyrightable. If I take a pic using a flock camera it should also be copyrightable, just like if my nest camera at home takes a pic of something, I can use that.
I guess you are saying "someone else owns the flock camera" so you don't get to own pictures. What if I buy the flock-like camera and put it up, I should own that.
You seem to have misunderstood an is/ought distinction. You may hold the (fairly extreme, as far as copyright goes) position that surveillance footage should be subject to copyright, but it's well established that it's not. Who owns the camera is irrelevant. At least in the US; I'm not aware of any jurisdictions that hold otherwise. This is why Wikipedia articles on world events in the past few decades are full of stills from surveillance cameras: it's one of the few sources of imagery of an event that are unambiguously legal to include, because unlike a photo or intentionally made video of something specific, it's not a creative work. It's also pretty firmly established that human authorship is required for something to be subject to copyright, and having an idea that lead to some particular expression is itself not sufficient; see, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...
(Not a lawyer, just a Wikipedia editor.)
I appreciate your informed take. I follow the reasoning but I am amazed it works this way. I found some articles that supported what you said, and also said there's a follow-on industry that figured out how to alter and edit videos just enough for a revised video to have creative contribution and make it copyrightable.
https://www.techdirt.com/2020/02/24/can-you-license-video-yo...
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...
This is a great case to study, but no determination of copyright was made. The only actual lawsuit was filed by PETA arguing that the monkey should have copyright, which led to a settlement with the human photographer and nothing else because obviously that's not possible.
For various reasons (mostly $$$) the guy never actually got a judgement. I think the chances are good that he could have prevailed in court; there is significant creative input to setting up cameras and triggers in a way to convince a wild monkey to take a selfie. It's not like he just left his camera sitting somewhere on accident and came back to find a photo in it.
I'm also not a lawyer, but I did do a lot of work in copyright for a company you've heard about.
> If you write a prompt and one-shot a problem and share the source code, that source code is probably not covered by copyright.
We will have to see about that! This is the kind of boundary that's still being figured out in court; it's going to depend on how hard you worked on the prompt. I highly doubt that even most slop was generated with a single half-ass prompt, and the bar is not as high as you might expect.
> If I stick a Flock camera on a pole somewhere and post the live output, there's been no meaningful human creative involvement in producing those images and so nobody can claim copyright on them.
It really depends on what pole, where, and why. In a parking lot in rural Wisconsin? Probably not. A recorded livestream of a political march? You likely have copyright.
I think that by virtue of the sheer amount of time spent using AI tools, it's pretty clear that these outputs have enough creative input to be copyrightable.
No, that’s not what they are saying. They’re saying that the code generated by a human with help from an LLM may potentially be. This is what I hope we are going to arrive at, eventually.
How could you establish what parts of the code was produced by an LLM vs updated by a human afterwards?
The LLM will output different results over time as the models get updated. Are we heading towards needing to retain a full prompt history that can be replayed against a specific LLM model version to prove what the output was for copyright purposes?
For those wondering what the difference is: consider what happens when an LLM regurgitates its training data. It's copyrighted... but not by the person who generated it.
Congrats on having the worst take in a thread full of them.