Public domain code does not taint the rest of a GPL codebase though, so if this is true (do you have references for such code being legally considered public?) in all jurisdictions it should not be a problem. While they can't stop someone else using the public domain code elsewhere under whatever licence they choose, this does not mean that they can't enforce the licence terms on the rest of the project that is GPL/whatever.
That specifically states “works created solely by machines” so probably doesn't cover AI-aided work? Though where you draw the line there is likely to be something that'll tax legal budgets for years to come…
From the 2025 Report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence [1]:
> The Office concludes that, given current generally available technology, prompts alone do not provide sufficient human control to make users of an AI system the authors of the output. Prompts essentially function as instructions that convey unprotectible ideas. While
highly detailed prompts could contain the user’s desired expressive elements, at present they do not control how the AI system processes them in generating the output.
Again, that seems to be talking about fully AI generated work, like “works created solely by machines” from the previous document, not AI-aided work. It is only stating that the prompt is not considered sufficient human work because it comes before the generation process, but it says nothing of subsequent editing of combining with other stuff.
The really annoying part is how the copyright lawyers have zero respect for the work of human review and refinement. Reviewing, editing and refining AI code isn't authorship, it's "adoption", they say. Repeated iteration is just rerolling the dice, they say. Not enough to make it copyrightable, they say.
Meanwhile all the actual programmers demand that you spend effort constantly reviewing and iterating on the AI's work so the project doesn't turn into slop.
Damned if you do, and damned if you don't. Maybe the best course of action is to opt out. Copyright is irrelevant if the software isn't published. So much for our precious commons.
The first paragraph talking about reviewing, editing, and refining, is literally the job of a Literary Editor when working with an author on their literature.
Editors do not have any IPRs over the resulting literary work.
Following that simile, the AI is the "author" and the developer is the "editor".
Given that an AI cannot be an "author" under copyright law, there is no copyright in the final product.
