Microsoft has claimed that something like 30% of the code for Windows is AI-generated. (I have not verified that they even said that, maybe that’s totally fake.) Last i checked AI-generated stuff cannot be copyrighted. Does this mean that significant portions of Windows are un-copyrightable, and MacroSlop couldn’t do a damn thing if someone leaked those parts?
And then, reservations about including slop in a software project aside, what could this mean for things like ReactOS? They’ve been careful to avoid including any MS-owned code, but nobody owns slop code.
I think this would be a case where copyright can only be held over some parts of whatever is being made.
Like Zarya of the Dawn. The text and panel layouts were done by a human author, but all the visuals were done by AI. The author got it copyrighted, bragged about the AI part, and had that copyright revoked. The author owns the dialog and layout and everything else that’s not a picture, but nobody owns the visuals.