this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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Counterpoint: how do you even prove that any part of the code was AI generated.
Also, i made a script years ago that algorithmically generates python code from user input. Is it now considered AI-generated too?
No, because you created the generation algorithm. Any code it generates is yours.
Not how I understand it, but I'm not a lawyer. The user that uses the script to generate the code can copyright the output and oop can copyright their script (and the output they themself generate). If it worked like you said, it would be trivial to write a script that generates all possible code by enumerating possible programs, then because the script will eventually generate your code, it's already copyrighted. This appear absurd to me.
Relevant: https://www.vice.com/en/article/musicians-algorithmically-generate-every-possible-melody-release-them-to-public-domain/
If the script copies chunks of code under the copyright of the original script writer, I typically see for those parts that the original owner keeps copyright of those chunks and usually license it in some way to the user. But the code from the user input part is still copyrightable by the user. And that's that last part that is most interesting for the copyright of AI works. I'm curious how the law will settle on that.
I'm open to counterarguments.
While nobody created neural nets and back propagation
Computer output cannot be copyrighted, don't focus on it being "AI". It's not quite so simple, there's some nuance about how much human input is required. We'll likely see something about that at some point in court. The frustrating thing is that a lot of this boils down to just speculation until it goes to court.
OP is obviously ignorant of how much tooling has already helped write boiler plate code.
Besides AI code is actually one of the things that’s harder to detect, compared to prose.
And all that said, AI is doing an amazing job writing a lot of the boilerplate TDD tests etc. To pretend otherwise is to ignore facts.
AI can actually write great code, but it needs an incredibly amount of tests wrapped around and a strict architecture that it’s forced to stick to. Yes, it’s far too happy sprinkling magic constants and repeat code, so it needs a considerable amount of support to clean that up … but it’s still vastly faster to write good code with an AI held on a short leash than it is to write good code by hand.
Guess you can't really prove that, unless you leave comments like "generated by Claude" in it with timestamp and whatnot 😁 Or one can prove that you are unable to get to that result yourself.
So nonsense, yes.
Oh shit… I’ve got terabytes of code I’ve written over the years that I’d be hard-pressed to even begin to understand today. The other day I discovered a folder full of old C++ libraries I wrote 20+ years ago, and I honestly don’t remember ever coding in C++.
There is absolutely no way you wrote terabytes of code lmao.
True enough, and I expected to get checked on that.
Regardless… along with the archives, assets and versioned duplicates, my old projects dating back to the 90s somehow now fill multiple TB of old hard drives that I continue to pack-rat away in my office. Useless and pointless to keep, but every piece was once a priority for someone.
Cursor, an ai/agentic-first ide, is doing this with a blame-style method. Each line as it's modified, added DOES show history of ai versus each human contributor.
So, not nonsense in probability, but in practice -- no real enforcement to turn the feature on.
Why would you want this?
If you pushed the bug that took down production - they aren't gonna whataboutism the AI generated it. They're still going to fire you.
It makes little difference IMHO. If you crash the car, you can’t escape liability blaming self driving.
Likewise, if you commit it, you own it, however it’s generated.
It's mainly for developers to follow decisions made over many iterations of files in a code base. A CTO might crawl the gitblame...but it's usually us crunchy devs in the trenches getting by.
Sorry, but as another reply: pushing bugs to production doesn't immediately equate to firing. Bug tickets are common and likely addressing issues in production.
Hence the "took down production"
I guess you mean like full outtage for all users? My bad just a lot of ways to take the verb "down" for me. Still, though, what a crappy company to not learn but fire from that experience!
Uh, yes, that's what they call a generative ai