Re: AI disclosure [was: AI slop "contributions" to IETF working groups]

[John Levine <[e-mail]>]

It appears that Brian E Carpenter  <[e-mail]> said:
>For documents that may end up as contractual requirements or as footballs in intellectual property disputes, I think we
>have to be asking for disclosure. I am definitely not a lawyer but I think that the legal status of ideas originated by an
>AI is still very unclear. It's rather like claiming that my cat invented a better mousetrap - who owns the IPR, and who is
>to blame when the mousetrap breaks?

In the United States, the answer is nobody.  US courts have held that only people can create copyrighted
or patented material, not robots or monkeys.*

Here's the USPTO's guidance on AI.  It says "only natural persons can be inventors."

https://www.uspto.gov/subscription-center/2025/revised-inventorship-guidance-ai-assisted-inventions

Blaming the AI is definitely a dead end.  Perhaps we need a rule that we only accept contributions from
natural persons, although since we deliberately do not try to verify the identity of contributors,
I don't know how we'd enforce that or what we'd do if a WG found it was having an argument with an LLM.

R's,
John

* - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute