Rules are enforced differently for corporations than they are for the rest of us.
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2026
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Fuck AI
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AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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Let me give you an example that can help answer your question.
I, a shitbag "entrepreneur", find and open source project I like that does 95% of what I want. I proceed to feed the code, design docs, and anything else I can find from the project to an AI. I then ask the AI to write the application from scratch using what I fed it as "inspiration", and add the 5% functionality I want. Now, let's say the AI gets it pretty close to working. Close enough that I can hire a dev to clean it up and get it going.
At the moment, that project is not covered by the open source license since the original code is gone and I used my own resources to "develop" it. I state "at the moment" because there is much debate around this.
Even if it's not copyright eligible, they still don't have any obligations to release the sources
There's still someone mapping out the features, designs etc b4 the AI goes to create it. Also saying 30% of code was AI generated hides cost of making the correct input: Planning, already existing code, Testing & Feedback loop, Reviewing. Its like saying Roofers aren't needed because 100% of nails were done with a nailgun.
Some tasks are easy with AI, others aren't but even when the code itself was 100% autonomous AI generated, the features, design was mapped out by someone is probably sufficient to retain copyright.
An image created by a five word prompt does not have a creative depth in creation like an image created by AI but with many refinement steps to get something truly unique.
Even if it can't be copyrighted anymore, it's still under trademark. And it's a shit OS, so why bother rebranding a forked version?
They're probably safe until some governmental organization builds up enough motivation and money to try and investigate it. And given the reaming they gave the IRS I doubt anyone is up for it.
Beyond that, I can't imagine the sheer legal nightmare it would be, given that MS will hire the best fucking lawyers money can buy. How do you quantify how much is AI generated and how much isn't? How much involvement of AI makes it "AI code"? You could spend years in court arguing about where that particular line is.
It's a fun hypothetical, but unlikely to matter to any real degree, at least for a company their size. Maybe it could be used against some startup making dumb public statements.