Except that it isn’t. If the AI wote it, it isn’t copyright. No attempt to protect that technology would work in the US legal system.
One day, a court will establish what a human needs to to change that from non-copyrightable to copyrightable. But for now, proprietary software development is playing with fire by relying on “security through obscurity” (i.e. nobody outside the company really knows where code came from).
So no vibe coding, but one can code with assistance of the stochastic parrot, and then is expected to review and understand the code in order to take responsibility.
But this is not Ardour’s policy, right? Ardour’s developer’s guide says “no LLM-generated code can be accepted by us”.
The hard question is: what is LLM-generated code? What is not LLM-generated code?
Auto complete, as far as I understand, is not based in machine learning. The Linux devs knowingly allowing such things into the kernel does not validate its use, as all the inherent problems with “gen” “AI” extend to LLMs as a whole. If anything, its troubling to see the open source OS endorse deeply harmful practices bankrolled by the same big tech companies many people are trying to escape from when running Linux.
“Auto complete on steroids” would be e.g. I write void add_new_midi_track ( and the LLM fills in the rest, incl arguments and implementation 
Sorry, what’s the confusion here? If I “generate” an image, even if I add something of my own, that does not make it my own in any way. Whatever I added is now tainted by the “generated” the image from which I was working. It can’t be my own creation no matter how much I change it.
Fair, and like, I understand how something like that could be useful. But is the tiny bit of convenience really worth all of the baggage that comes with LLMs? I’m trying not to restate all the details in my replies, as that’s annoying and stressful for me. I’m troubled that the usage of something like this is even on the table for this project.
It currently isn’t for Ardour, but the Linux kernel does set a precedent to keep an eye on.
That isn’t a description of music, or writing, or visual art.
Why should it be a description of source code?
A derivative work is still your own work, it’s just built on a foundation rather than starting from scratch.
This is very common in classical music where you take a theme composed by someone else and build on it, or re-orchestrating an existing piece of music, giving it a whole new character.
Not to mention pretty much every jazz “standard”, which began life as a show tune or pop tune 1-3 decades earlier and were transformed by the players, sometimes unrecognizably, but often in ways that left the skeleton of the song intact, but nevertheless something very individual to them.
Funny your nickname relates to the link …
Astonishing enough, one of the most influental skateboarders, Rodney Mullen, kinda covered the topic , minus llm of course, but “what is your work” or “what is creativity”.
Not trying to make a point, agree or disagree, i just like the speech for several reasons, and perhaps others like it too. I hope so
“Pop an ollie and innovate”, Rodney Mullen:
I misspoke in my last reply. I shouldn’t have said it doesn’t make it my own “in any way”, as if the “generated” portion absorbs my own contributions into itself or something. There is a kernel (ha) of truth to the idea, however, as derivative works can only be built off the efforts of other people. While LLMs are trained on human creations and can only output what they’ve been fed, it will always result in a garbled mismatch of potentially hundreds of works, most of which are stolen, none of which can be attributed to. To use an LLM is to erase the history of everyone’s work that is being stolen from, reducing most every attribution to “the human race, sometime, somewhere, who knows”.
How do you feel about (historical) Stack Exchange ?
Human beings responding to queries by other human beings? Engaging with each other instead of wasting copious amounts of resources and energy interacting with a theft machine that will never provide reliable information? Knowing that if someone consistently gives horrible answers, there’s at least a username to hold accountable and take action against?
Accountability? With Stack Exchange? You are kidding, right?
Sure you could down vote, but that’s about it. And much of the information on it aged as well as uncovered milk.
Cheers,
Keith
OK, so there are (at least) 3 interwoven, but distinct issues here.
They are not the same, and I’m not particularly concerned with #3 because my view of human culture tends to emphasize “stealing” (as in “great artists steal”) and downplays the idea that human beings own culture even when they create it.
#1 is critically important, and #2 is also concerning. I do not believe, however, that by providing an MCP interface to Ardour, that we are necessarily engaging with #1 (because you could use a local instance). I also think that the intellectual and practical questions surrounding #2 are complex, and not sensibly reduced to “they read everything and now they spit it back out”.
Well, I pushed the new code to PR #986. Take a look.
Full disclaimer: I supervised the whole process, but all of the C++ code was written by Claude; I wrote the Lua code myself last year.
If it’s rejected because it’s AI-generated, no hard feelings. I fully expect that, based on the stated policy. I’m just concerned the free software community, in general, is rejected a breakthrough technology.
Plus, I’d like to feel that I’ve contributed something useful to Ardour, however small it may be.
I never even heard of Stack Exchange before today, so apologies for not having a history with it and having to go off of the Wikipedia page. Regardless, I was obviously referring to the fact that moderation could be applied to actual users instead of some bot.
I also do not think people own the culture they create. At least, not exclusively. My previous comment was less about the MCP integration and more on the idea that something LLM “generated” could be used as a starting point without resulting in a work that is tainted. It’s true that people take subconscious inspiration all the time, but that is still rooted in the individual, their experiences, tastes, and whatnot.
Personally, if my work influenced someone else, I would be proud of that. If my work was instead thrown into a computer then regurgitated at random into somebody else’s project, I honestly don’t know what I’d feel. It wouldn’t be great.
As @plane pointed out, LLMs are pretty intertwined with fascism. I’ve tried to stay away from the term because of how loaded it is, but there’s no getting around it. They said it better then I can, honestly, so I think I’ll just leave it here.