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Comment by liminal-dev | Hacker News Reader

I disagree with this line of reasoning. To the same extent, I could say that you did not make an app because you didn’t write the compiled assembly code, build the processor, make the silicone yourself, etc.

Tools are tools. Same as Photoshop, Ableton, they get you to where you want to go.

Where is the line drawn?

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Silicone: rubbery, used for kitchen utensils and breast implants

Silicon: Metallic, used for making circuit components

Oops.

When you create a work using a tool, you own the copyright.

When you create a work using an LLM, there is no copyright.

So then isn't an LLM less than a tool?

This is not correct and a common misunderstanding of the court ruling. The verbatim output of an LLM is not copyrightable. If you create a work using an LLM, this IS of course copyrightable.

When "using an LLM", means the human has to substantially alter the output of the LLM for the work to be eligible for copyright. Agreed.

But this makes the LLM tool different to other tools. If I author a novel using a word processor I don't then in addition have to substantially alter that output in order for the work to qualify for copyright.

[edit] It's like, how substantive would changes to J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter need to to be in order for a derivative work to qualify for copyright? Now apply that to the output of an LLM.

No, the court case you’re thinking of was when someone tried to say the AI itself had the copyright ownership. That’s not allowed (at least in the US), the copyright owner must always be a human. This doesn’t mean that a human cannot copyright AI-directed works.

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