Doc: Clarify our stance regarding AI-generated code in CLA #14026
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Rationale for the CLA update (AI-assisted contributions)
Copyright law in major jurisdictions requires human authorship. Authorities such as the U.S. Copyright Office have made clear that purely machine-generated output is not copyrightable, while AI-assisted works are protected only to the extent that a human exercised creative judgment (e.g. selection, modification, arrangement):
https://www.copyright.gov/ai/
Given this, the CLA was updated to:
The clause deliberately avoids requiring contributors to make false or unverifiable warranties (for example about AI training data or model provenance), which contributors cannot realistically know and which do not meaningfully reduce legal risk. This approach aligns with guidance from open-source legal practitioners, such as Red Hat’s analysis of AI and open source:
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/ai-assisted-development-and-open-source-navigating-legal-issues
Instead, the CLA anchors responsibility where the law recognises it: in the human contributor’s actions and rights. Contributors must confirm that they exercised meaningful creative judgment and that they have the legal right to submit the work, preserving a clean chain of title suitable for dual or proprietary licensing.
This approach is consistent with how major open-source projects are adapting their contribution policies, for example Fedora’s policy on AI-assisted contributions:
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/council-policy-proposal-policy-on-ai-assisted-contributions/165092
This is also consistent with EU copyright law, which protects works that reflect human creative choices, even when created with the assistance of AI tools, but not works generated entirely automatically without human involvement:
https://hai.lu/posts/2024/03/originality-concept-in-eu-law