AI, Code and the Monkey Selfie
A video version of the argument that AI-generated code may lack the human authorship needed for copyright.
Writing into being.
A video version of the argument that AI-generated code may lack the human authorship needed for copyright.
This article argues that code generated without sufficient human authorship may fall into the public domain by default. It frames that legal risk as a neglected issue inside the current rush toward AI-assisted software development.
This article examines the legal parallel between the monkey selfie case and software generated by large language models. It considers what happens to ownership, licensing, and open source when code lacks traditional human authorship.
On the January 2025 Copyright Office advice that vibe-coded software is public domain, why chat-window prompting fails to transfer authorial intent, and what a clay-like programming interface would need to do differently.