On Mon, 10 Nov 2025 11:36:00 -0800 Linus Torvalds <[email protected]> wrote:
> What's the copyright difference between artificial intelligence and > good oldfashioned wetware that isn't documented by "I used this tool > and these sources". Probably no difference. I would guess the real liability is for those that use AI to submit patches. With the usual disclaimers of IANAL, I'm assuming that when you place your "Signed-off-by", you are stating that you have the right to submit this code. If it comes down that you did not have the right to submit the code, the original submitter is liable. I guess the question also is, is the maintainer that took that patch and added their SoB also liable? If it is discovered that the AI tool was using source code that it wasn't supposed to be using, and then injected code that was pretty much verbatim to the original source, where it would be a copyright infringement, would the submitter of the patch be responsible? Would the maintainer? I guess this would be no different if the submitter saw some code from a proprietary project and cut and pasted it without understanding they were not allowed to, and submitted that. If the lawyers come back and say the onus is on the submitter and not the maintainer that the code being submitted is legal to be submitted under copyright law, then I'm perfectly fine in accepting any AI code (as long as the submitter can prove they understand that code and the code is clean). But until the lawyers state that explicitly, I can see why maintainers can be nervous about accepting AI generated code. Perhaps this transparency can make matters worse. As it can be argued that the maintainer knew it was a questionable AI that generated the code? (Like it would be if a maintainer knew the code being submitted was copied from a proprietary project) This is out of scope of the current patch, as the patch is about transparency and not AI acceptance. -- Steve
