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Comment by loudmax | Hacker News Reader

I wonder about the copyright status of code put out by ChatGPT.

I presume anything ChatGPT generates belongs to the user who asked for the code to be generated. Is there any clause in the EULA that says this is the case? Or is code generated by ChatGPT automatically BSD-licensed? Or can ChatGPT claim ownership or joint-ownership of code generated using their tools?

Another question is the code it was trained on. Presumably all of it was open source. BSD-licensed code typically requires attribution. GPL code requires anything copied to remain GPL. If the GPT is reproducing small stanzas of code from memory it probably doesn't matter. If GPT reproduces larger blocks of code from stuff that it was trained on, there is a possibility of failing to comply with copyright.

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> I presume anything ChatGPT generates belongs to the user who asked for the code to be generated.

Machine generated works cannot be copyrighted, only human-created works. The part here that has yet to be determined is whether or not AI output is considered "machine generated". An argument could be made that writing a prompt is sufficient control to consider the output human-made for the purposes of copyright. If that's the case, then copyright will go to the human who wrote the prompt (or their employer).

This will, at some point, have to be decided in court. Right now, the only answer is "nobody knows".

Photographers own their images, even if the scene was set up by someone else.

Pushing a button is sufficient to own copyright, in theory.

Right, which is why I think that courts will end up deciding that writing a prompt is sufficient control. But as of this moment, none of this has been decided -- so nobody actually knows.

I think in this case the product is the scene and not the picture though. If one could copyright the result of a prompt then I assume no one else could use the same (or very similar) prompt for profit as it is likely to produce similar code whereas a scene can be photographed for profit by anyone regardless if a similar picture has already been taken, or so I assume. If Andy Warhol just photographed Prince in a same/similar pose and clothes would there be the lawsuit case ? I don't think so.

So a binary created by a compiler isn’t copyrighted ?

Last I checked , that’s not the case. Otherwise the entire proprietary software universe would collapse (not that having that outcome isn’t desirable per se )

A binary created by a compiler is not machine-generated (for copyright purposes). A human wrote the program. The compiler just translated it.

A binary created by a compiler is exactly as much a deterministic result of the input and choice of compiler and settings without additional human creativity as, say, an image created by a prompt and a diffusion model, and the logic of the Copyright Office determination that prompt (if sufficiently a work of authorship) but not the output in the latter case is subject to copyright would, if applied consistently, seem to apply to the former case equally.

I agree.

I'm a little confused by the responses I'm getting to my comment. People seem to be thinking that I'm saying that copyright cannot apply to AI produced output. I said no such thing.

What I am saying is that this is not a legally settled matter. It will certainly end up in a courtroom, and will then become a settled matter. That day isn't here yet.

If the level of determinism is truly the same then I think that might play into the argument that AI output is indeed a statistical collage. And yes, human output might be as well but the burden of proof would be on the other side of the court. I'd really be careful with the parallels because I think we can agree that compilers don't work like LLMs. The output of a compiler isn't related to the previous programs it compiled in form of training data - so there is no fair use or not fair use question here. Dealing with something without precedence means we can't point to something else and expect an exact match.

An argument could also be made that If you pulled all the copyright infringements out of the training set for ChatGPT it would be not be half as intelligent.

Well, from a legal point of view, it's not yet clear if training using copyrighted material constitutes copyright infringement. My guess is that courts will rule that it does not.

(I'm not saying that's the right call from an ethical point of view, just that I think that's how courts will interpret the law.)

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