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dgerard@awful.systems

AI works can’t be copyrighted or patented in the US (pivot-to-ai.com)

submitted 17 hours ago by dgerard@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

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even if you think your robot is alive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoNrMLTJXhE&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA - video
https://pivottoai.libsyn.com/20260304-ai-works-cant-be-copyrighted-or-patented-in-the-us - podcast

time: 6 min 25 sec

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[–] johnefrancis@lemmy.ca 23 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

I guess all that bad code people have been prompting AI to write is public domain, no matter what license they assign to it. Licenses are all based on copyright.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 1 points 3 hours ago

except that it's all stolen code. whether it's a copyright violation, well that's call your lawyer

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 14 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Heh, this would be fantastic and I think technically in line with the GNU GPL - all code produced from GPL code must also be licensed as GPL. Therefore the output of any model that trained on any GPL code would also be GPL.

Open source all the things!

[–] johnefrancis@lemmy.ca 7 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

The GPL is a license based on copyright. If AI output can't be copyrighted, then it can't be licensed, it becomes public domain, which means you can make a derivative, then copyright that under a commercial license.

With no.copyright, stuff gets weird fast.

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 4 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

No no, see the GNU GPL is copyleft:

The licenses in the GPL series are all copyleft licenses, which means that any derivative work must be distributed under the same or equivalent license terms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License

So if (stressing the if) output from an AI that was trained on GPL code is considered a derivative work, then it must also be licensed as GNU GPL. That makes it open source, but not unlicensed.

GNU GPL is intentionally insidious this way, it prevents corporate profiteering from GPL projects because any derivative work must use the same license.

The question is whether a court decision would uphold that AI generated code based on GPL code training counts as a derivative work. This decision regarding generated art seems like it might set a precedent for that.

[–] Rekall_Incorporated@piefed.social 1 points 10 hours ago

Wait, so if you include LLM-derived source code into a GPL project, it loses it's access to copyright?

This doesn't make sense...

And one would thing the same would have to be true of proprietary software.