4 ms·

The U.S. Supreme Court just declined to hear a case, thus upholding a lower court precedent that LLM output are not copyrightable: https://www.reuters.com/legal

The U.S. Supreme Court just declined to hear a case, thus upholding a lower court precedent that LLM output are not copyrightable: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-declines-hear-dispute-over-copyrights-ai-generated-material-2026-03-02/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-de... What this means in practice is that (currently), all output of an LLM is legally considered to not be copyrightable (to the extent that it's an original work). If it happens to regurgitate an existing copyrighted work, though, is that infringement? I'm not sure we have a legal precedent on that question yet.

jazzyjackson 8mo ago
There’s several large settlements that say Anthropomorphic/OAI didn’t want to have legal precedent. In general if it’s not outright regurgitated it would be derivative.
- reverius42 8mo ago
  The out of court settlements that avoid precedent don't mean anything in a broader legal context. Legally speaking, right now in the USA, output of LLMs is not copyrighted and cannot be copyrighted (without substantial transformation by a human). I don't think this means the same thing as whether or not LLM output can infringe on someone else's copyright though (that does pose an interesting question -- can something non-copyrightable in general infringe on something copyrighted?).
  - nkmnz 8mo ago
    Of course. I cannot claim copyright on a poem that I have memorized as a child and written down as an adult. The original author can, though.
  - JAlexoid 8mo ago
    I don't believe that you require to do much to claim copyright over an output of an LLM. The input prompt is under copyright - a simple modification to the source code will grant copyright to you.
Muskwalker 8mo ago
The Thaler case here is something different than "AI-generated = uncopyrightable" though. Thaler was not trying to copyright work in the way humans who make work with tools normally copyright their work ("Copyright 2026 by Me"), he was specifically trying to give AI the copyright ("Copyright 2026 by My-AI-Tool"). The court rejected this because only humans can own copyright. I believe there are other cases where AI-generated works were found uncopyrightable but Thaler is not a good example* of them.

jazzyjackson 8mo ago

There’s several large settlements that say Anthropomorphic/OAI didn’t want to have legal precedent. In general if it’s not outright regurgitated it would be derivative.

reverius42 8mo ago
The out of court settlements that avoid precedent don't mean anything in a broader legal context. Legally speaking, right now in the USA, output of LLMs is not copyrighted and cannot be copyrighted (without substantial transformation by a human). I don't think this means the same thing as whether or not LLM output can infringe on someone else's copyright though (that does pose an interesting question -- can something non-copyrightable in general infringe on something copyrighted?).
- nkmnz 8mo ago
  Of course. I cannot claim copyright on a poem that I have memorized as a child and written down as an adult. The original author can, though.
- JAlexoid 8mo ago
  I don't believe that you require to do much to claim copyright over an output of an LLM. The input prompt is under copyright - a simple modification to the source code will grant copyright to you.

Muskwalker 8mo ago

The Thaler case here is something different than "AI-generated = uncopyrightable" though. Thaler was not trying to copyright work in the way humans who make work with tools normally copyright their work ("Copyright 2026 by Me"), he was specifically trying to give AI the copyright ("Copyright 2026 by My-AI-Tool"). The court rejected this because only humans can own copyright. I believe there are other cases where AI-generated works were found uncopyrightable but Thaler is not a good example* of them.