That said, even under those rules, I would be comfortable arguing before the court that this code has significant human involvement and easily passes the copyright standard.
It’s also why I don’t think someone can just easily create another one and license it under BSD. My code is AI assisted, but all truly important pieces were human made.
Get one AI to describe what the code does, and another to implement based on that description. You might even get away with a human doing one of the steps. A variation of the classic “clean room reverse engineering” method that was used by Compaq to reimplement IBM's BIOS and start the clone PC market.
Some argue that “it doesn't work like that” but it certainly seems to be what some people are doing and as yet no one has been confident enough that their copyright extends through this mechanism that they've tested the theory in court.
Note: I'm not saying it is right, but that it might well be perfectly legal. It is definitely possible, practical even. I'd still release stuff under AGPL/similar for the same reasons stated above, but I'd not operate under any illusion that I'd be safe from someone using that method to copy everything they wanted to.
But I am counting on the fact that _companies_ would be too worried about legal uncertainty to try this.
Oh, my sweet summery child :-)
Companies have been doing far more dodgy things, things that look objectively illegal where-as the clean-room reverse engineering thing looks to me (caveat: not a legal expert at all) to be legally defensible, for a long time, definitely pre-AI.
Even if a company operating in your jurisdiction, where you as an individual might have a cat in hell's chance of even trying to sort the situation to your preference, might not, you can bet your last <currency unit> that a company elsewhere will feel more free to do so if they wanted what you have without agreeing to your terms.
If it’s a small company, it’s not worth it, but then again they are not causing a lot of damage either. If it’s a big company, they will find me unexpectedly resistant to usual legal bullying tactics. I have legal insurance, multiple lawyers as friends and don’t have a job so have loads of time for filing paperwork.