> The prospect of being sued because the LLM outputted training code you're not allowed to use, or to relicense, is exciting?
The problem with this is that if someone sues you for this they have to somehow prove that you actually infringed. They can't just point to the code and say "See, mah, infringement!" The legal system does recognize that it is very possible for two people, completely independently, to arrive at a nearly identical solution.
Of course we're talking of code for which that's implausible.
I think in most cases twenty lines of identical code are more than enough for that to be the case (at least if it contains a few non-single-letter identifiers).
I mean, if it uses the exact same identifiers and maybe even comments, then sure, that's pretty good evidence. However, 99.99999999999 percent of the time this will not be the case. As in, the super-super-super-majority of LLM-generated code is customized for the specific use case it's being employed in. As such, claiming any kind of infringement, let alone proving it, will be insanely difficult.
The problem with this is that if someone sues you for this they have to somehow prove that you actually infringed. They can't just point to the code and say "See, mah, infringement!" The legal system does recognize that it is very possible for two people, completely independently, to arrive at a nearly identical solution.