That's an opinion from the US copyright office, not a law or a decision made in court. I think it remains to be seen to what extent using generative AI affects the practical application of copyright in larger projects: the office holds that the human-contributed parts still qualify for copyright, and I think there are a variety of possible interpretations and arguments that could effectively allow a largely AI-generated codebase to still be protected by copyright, even if technically big sections of it are not (in a similar manner as e.g. maps are protected, even if the underlying facts are not).

(I would also argue whether it matters in practice the other way: if something was AI generated, it is in principle cheap for someone else to generate it separately anyway: if you're wanting to copy AI generated code then there's probably some part of the ideas in it that are valuable beyond what the AI can output on its own)

(Also, this uncertainty does still mean that it's probably prudent to record which parts of your software are generated and which are not: it's a conceivable outcome that some company winds up in court and manages to argue that the human-generated parts are still covered under copyright, but are unable to point to which parts those are and therefore lose it entirely)

Yes, that's exactly what they were talking about. It says right in that page that sufficient changes can allow them to copyright the work, and it also says that their decision can be challenged.

And once again, you guys make this claim without reading the law.

>several provisions of the Copyright Act imply that it uses the word "author" only to refer to human beings, including provisions (1) vesting copyright ownership "initially in the author"; (2) limiting copyright duration to 70 years after "the author's death"; (3) providing for inheritance of certain rights by the author's "widow or widower" or "surviving children or grandchildren"; (4) requiring a signature to transfer copyright ownership; (5) extending protection to unpublished works regardless of the author's "nationality or domicile"; and (6) defining a "joint work" based on the authors' "intention" to merge their contributions in a certain way.

The law clearly, definitively, is talking about human authorship and nothing else. You are basing this concept that you can copyright AI written code on a law change that has not happened. It is very very unlikely that a law change can/will ever happen, because copyright law in particular is enshrined in international treaties like the 140 year old Berne Convention. This is a major reason why I was very much opposed to the TPP. Every new international copyright treaty is just more cement, making it completely unchangable. If you want to change this law, it will require cooperation from most of the countries in the world to do it.

To be clear, the Copyright Office is providing guidance and a particular (respected) interpretation of the law. Their opinions do influence courts, but they do not constitute law themselves.