Post #3043072

2026-05-18 07:58 UTC

@allpurposemat@mastodon.gamedev.place If you're talking about the Thaler v. Perlmutter case, the interpretation that they ruled AI output as "public domain" is a serious misunderstanding, widely reported by sensationalist media. All the courts did was decline to register copyright in the name of an AI "author". However: - Copyright registration is optional, copyright itself is enforceable without registration. - They didn't say anything about the status of the works in question, and definitely not that they're public domain. - It's my reading that this was thrown out on a technicality, because Thaler tried to have the AI be the legal copyright holder, which the law does not permit (it must be a human). It's very possible that the slop would have been copyright-registered had Thaler put himself as the author. In my view, the jury is still very much out on this, and I would caution against using LLM-created code as if it were public domain.

Replies (2)

@allpurposemat@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-05-18 08:30

@muvlon@hachyderm.io Interesting! I did indeed only see media reporting on it, but did not read the actual case. Will read up on (I guess) [this document](https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2025/03/23-5233.pdf) to get a better understanding. Though I hold that EU should not be subject to US rulings, it is helpful to see how other jurisdictions interpret it as a hint of how EU might handle it. Either way, my personal belief is still that LLM output is subject to the copyright of its training material, and thus 99% unfree.

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@yoasif@mastodon.social 2026-05-18 13:13

@muvlon@hachyderm.io @allpurposemat@mastodon.gamedev.place The US copyright office has said that LLM code cannot be copyrighted because they aren't produced by a human - it has nothing to do with attribution: https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-2-Copyrightability-Report.pdf How is the jury still out exactly?

Open ##3043075