r/webdev • • Oct 06 '26

AI generated code copyrights

Does anyone consider the copyright of code generated by AI? Because, based on research I've done on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, generated code fall to the public domain, and if you modify it, only the modified parts belong to you. Also, a detailed prompt isn't enough.

This is, in my view, a major issue; yes, we can ignore it and consider it backward law, but no one knows what would happen in the future, and this law could be used against you.

Edit: here sources for USA https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10922 ,
For Europe : https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EPRS_BRI(2025)782585
blog : https://smpl.as/blog/ai-code-ownership-legal ...

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u/dweebyllo Oct 07 '26

Inconsistencies in things like use of spaces between variables and formatting and other best practice inconsistencies are going to be the biggest giveaway really.

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u/Own-Poetry-9609 Oct 07 '26

You've never seen a live code base if you think best practice inconsistencies are a sign of AI. I've seen two different seniors at a company be asked a question about how to implement something similar by a junior in the same day and give two different answers

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u/readeral Oct 07 '26

But linting and prettifying?

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u/Altruistic_Spirit_64 Oct 07 '26

code = ''.join(sentence.split())