Ask HN: Can companies claim copyright over their LLM-generated codebases?

6•mks_shuffle•3w ago

As tools like Claude Code and Codex become more widely used across industries, will companies be able to claim copyright over their codebases (or products) or impose license restrictions when a significant portion of the code is generated by LLMs?

Comments

dartharva•3w ago

The code is still technically "written" by employed programmers who only happen to be using the "autocomplete tools" of Claude Code and Codex. So the code written is still the employer's IP under typical employment terms. Nothing changes on that front.

mks_shuffle•3w ago

Thanks for the reply. I’ve mostly heard that images generated by AI are considered non-copyrightable (prompts are written by a human). Would the situation be different for code compared to images, since both are created with generative AI tools? Or does it depend on whether the generated artifact is created by an individual versus within a company? Thanks.

wmf•3w ago

The talk about AI being uncopyrightable is mostly cope from AI haters. The default assumption is going to be that everything is copyrighted because some human creativity was used somewhere in the process. To actually claim that something is public domain you'd have to prove that no human creativity was ever present which would be really difficult.

throwaway5465•3w ago

Compilers do not have copyright over the code resulting from instructions given.

LLMs do not have copyright over the ode resulting from instructions given.

wmf•3w ago

That's not the issue. Some people are saying that the outputs of AI are not copyrightable at all.

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