Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your code is not in that thing. That thing has merely read your code and adjusted its own generative code. It is not directly using your code any more than programmers are using print statements. A book can be copyrighted, the vocabulary of language cannot. A particular program can be copyrighted, but snippets of it cannot, especially when they are used in a different context. And that is why this lawsuit is dead on…
Just to be clear; I cannot prove that they have used my code, but for the sake of argument, lets assume so. They would have directly used my code when they trained the thing. I see it as an equivalent of creating a zip-file. My code is not directly in the zip file either. Only by the act of un-zipping does it come back, which requires a sequence of math-steps.
This is a generative neural network. It doesn't contain a copy of your code; it contains weightings that were slightly adjusted by your code. Getting it to output a literal copy is only possible in two cases:
- If your code solves a problem that can only be solved in a single way, for a given coding style / quality level. The AI will usually produce the same result, given the same input, and it's going to be an attempt at a solution. This isn't copyright violation.
- If 'your' code has actually already been replicated hundreds of times over, such that the AI was over-trained on it. In that case it's a copyright violation... but how come you never went after the hundreds of other violations?