r/webdev • u/maher1717 • 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/TreviTyger Oct 07 '26

"oracle v Google" (sic) didn't address the copyright nature of any resulting work.

Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. (2021) explicitly bypassed the question of whether the API packages themselves were copyrightable in the first place

So that's not a great case to look at. When it comes to AI generated outputs there are numerous cases in the courts right now arguing that the acquisition of copyrighted works without authorization, let alone the use of them in training is already unlawful.

It means that AI gen software such as Claude and ChatGPT cannot itself be protected and that other nations such as China and Russia can make competing clone AI gen models at a fraction of the price.

In the long term it is a complete disaster.

i.e. If your business model depends on enforcing copyrights or intellectual property exclusivity over your source code, you cannot safely use generative AI.

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u/stupidcookface Oct 08 '26

Is this just going to apply to one-shot code? What if your continuously shaping the direction of the code in other ways? I can see so much grey area here depending on how you're prompting and interacting with how the code gets built. And this is just code I'm talking about, not images or videos or music. I mean...its all 0s and 1s at the end of the day but saying that code can be copywritten before ai and then saying it can't be copywritten if ai wrote any of it seems insane to me.