Big AI vendors keep telling us that “AI-rewriting” source code from one language into another produces fresh, original work that the user can relicense at will. But is this claim actually true?
This talk walks us through a few recent, very real cases that put those kind of claims to the test from a legal pov.
We will look at why neither approach holds up under existing IP law.
This talk includes a brief overview and introduction to intellectual property rights aimed at Open Source developers.
We revisit the Berne Convention, the Naruto v. Slater “monkey selfie” ruling on non-human authorship, and the recent German GEMA v. OpenAI decision. We will also discuss the limits of the arguments brought forward and legal matters showing up on the horizon. Along the way we will also clarify the possible legal impact of agentic programming.
The goal is to give FOSS maintainers, contributors, and decision-makers a clear, practical mental model for evaluating “AI-(re)wrote-it” claims – both when they are made to their projects and when they are tempted to leverage the power of LLMs themselves.
