In one of my earlier AI and coding articles, where I looked at how ChatGPT can rewrite and improve your existing code, one of the commenters, @pbug5612, had an interesting question:
It's a good question and one that doesn't have an easy answer. Over the past two weeks, I've reached out to attorneys and experts to try to get a definitive answer.
There's a lot to unpack here, but a good starting point is the overall theme of this discussion. As attorney Collen Clark of law firm Schmidt & Clark states:
Ultimately, until more definitive legal precedents are established, the legal implications of using AI-generated code remain complex and uncertain.
That's not to say there is a shortage of opinions. In this article, I'll discuss the copyright implications of using ChatGPT to write your code. In a related article, I discuss issues of liability pertaining to AI-generated code.
Here's a probable scenario. You're working on an application. Most of that application is your direct work. You've defined the UI, crafted the business logic, and written most of the code. However, you've used ChatGPT to write a few modules and linked that resulting code into your app.