Re: GR -- Allow AI-Assisted Contributions
On Thu, Feb 19, 2026 at 10:35:19AM +0100, Arian Ott wrote:
> Debian requires all contributions to be correctly copyrighted or licensed.
> While this isn't a problem with human contributions, we cannot simply
> assume AI generated content to be the IP of the person promoting the AI.
> For instance in the EU AI generated material cannot be copyrighted since a
> machine has not the ability to create original work like we humans do.
>
> You can find a detailed study from 2025 explaining the situation. Section
> 1.3 is particularly relevant.
If you look at the document, it states that AI generated content is
not generated by a human being, and so per EU legal principles, it is
not copyrighted. But Public Domain code does not have a copyright,
either, since it has been disclaimed by the author. So if a human
starts with AI generated content, and then makes changes to it,
arguably the result *is* copyrightable --- by the human who made
changes to the code.
You could argue that I'm not a lawyer; which is true. But neither are
you, as far as I know. So I'd suggest that we not try to use legal
arguments without having a lawyer give us advice, and that advice
include information about which legal regimes the lawyer used to form
their legal advice.
Best regards,
- Ted
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