Comment by handoflixue
12 days ago
There was a major lawsuit about this involving Google vs Java years ago. Copying code might not be legal, but an LLM can use the application, learn how it works, write unit tests around that, and then fill in code that passes those unit tests.
The current fun loophole is to have the LLM decompile the existing code, build unit tests around that, and then have a different LLM model build the code that satisfies those tests.
Either way, you can absolutely get a "clean room" result from an LLM.
Yeah a “properly conducted clean room reimplementation” is legal, not an “LLM reproduction” full stop.
And there’s a huge foot gun here in that many LLMs have been trained on copyrighted code that may include the subject of your reimplementation in some cases, which pose a risk of breaking the clean room.