The AI-Assisted vs. AI-Generated Boundary Is Legally Undefined
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The Copyright Office says AI assistance does not bar copyrightability but has not defined where AI-assisted ends and AI-generated begins. Is changing a comment in AI-generated code sufficient to make it AI-assisted? No ruling, no guidance. This makes copyright status of AI-touched code ambiguous at the file level and even within files. For anyone building on that code (investors, acquirers, downstream compliance), ambiguity is liability. Fenwick & West: copyright protection is no longer an automatic byproduct of software development. The American Bar Association agrees the current licensing framework does not address the complexities AI introduces.