Appeals court narrows DMCA claims over AI output that omits attribution
A Ninth Circuit ruling limits when missing attribution in generative-AI output becomes a DMCA violation.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal of a claim that GitHub Copilot and OpenAI Codex violated Section 1202 of the DMCA by returning code without copyright-management information, holding that the tools generate new works rather than remove attribution from an existing copy. The court said literal identity is not always required when a protected work is substantially reproduced with its attribution stripped, and it did not decide whether similar output could support ordinary copyright-infringement claims. For creators and publishers, the ruling narrows one route to enhanced DMCA damages while leaving traditional copyright and contract claims to carry more of the AI-attribution fight.