Re: Current policy on AI-generated code in NumPy

Hi,

On Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 10:33 PM Robert Kern via NumPy-Discussion
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 9:16 AM Matthew Brett <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Sat, Feb 14, 2026 at 5:38 PM Robert Kern <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >
>> > On Sat, Feb 14, 2026 at 12:17 PM Matthew Brett <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hi,
>> >>
>> >> On Fri, Feb 13, 2026 at 9:45 PM Robert Kern <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> > On Wed, Feb 11, 2026 at 6:26 PM Matthew Brett via NumPy-Discussion <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Just to clarify - in case it wasn't clear, what I'm floating as a proposal, would be something like this, as a message to PR authors:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Please specify one of these:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> 1) I wrote this code myself, without looking at significant AI-generated code OR
>> >> >> 2) The code contains AI-generated content, but the AI-generated code is sufficiently trivial that it cannot reasonably be subject to copyright OR
>> >> >> 3) There is non-trivial AI-generated code in this PR, and I have documented my searches to confirm that no parts of the code are subject to existing copyright.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> So - the burden for the reviewer is just to confirm, in case 3, that the author has documented their searches.   We take the word of the contributor for the option they have chosen.   Obviously, the documentation requirement of case 3 is somewhat of a burden for the contributor, and may therefore encourage them to write the code themselves, to avoid that burden.  That might not be a bad thing, long term, for the project, and it seems reasonable to me as some defence against copyright violation, and a message that the project cares about such violation.
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > For Case 3, I would love to see an example of the search that you would accept. If you could take a recent PR (human or AI, doesn't really matter for this purpose), and show the search that would satisfy you, that would go a long way towards clarifying what you are asking for here. We'd need a worked example or two before adopting this policy because if I don't know what you are asking for, no new contributor will, either.
>> >>
>> >> Yes, that's a reasonable request.   But how do you think I should
>> >> proceed?   Make an issue on Numpy, and start drafting?   Start another
>> >> email thread?  Or a Discourse / Scientific Python thread?
>> >
>> >
>> > Just here should be fine. Take an existing PR that has copyrightable content (e.g. an entire new function or three, each more than ~10 lines, not just many one-line updates scattered around; the most interesting ones would be those that implement a known algorithm). Do the code search that would satisfy you. Write out here what you would want a PR author to provide.
>>
>> I'd suggested (off-list) that this might be better done in another
>> thread - but perhaps it can be done here.
>>
>> Reflecting, and experimenting - there are many caveats, but I think it
>> is reasonable to give the contributor some responsibility for formal
>> care about copyright.
>>
>> One way of doing that - is to ask some AI (if possible, an AI other
>> than the one generating the code) to review for copyright.  I've
>> experimented with that over at
>> https://github.com/numpy/numpthis looks likey/pull/30828#issuecomment-3920553882 .
>> But the idea would be that we ask a contributor who has generated code
>> by AI, to do this as part of the PR sign-off.   They should be in a
>> much better position to do this than the maintainers, as they should
>> have been exploring the problem themselves, and therefore should be
>> able to write better queries to guide the AI review.   And with the
>> prompts as a start, it's not particularly time-consuming.
>
>
> I think all of the arguments it produced are not grounded in the principles of copyright law. Unfortunately, I think this is one of the areas where LLMs just generate plausible nonsense rather than sound legal analysis. Each thing that it noted was a one-liner or a general idea, nothing copyrightable. It's essentially writes like a median StackOverflow programmer with a dim understanding of copyright law (no slight intended to anyone; I am one). I've looked at the two files it suggested, and I see no similarity to the PR.
>
> I do kind of suspect that LLMs could be used, with care, to help facilitate the abstraction-filtration-comparison test and maybe finding candidates to do that test on, but a general instruction to give arguments for copyright violation apparently yields more chaff to wade through.

Yes, sure - and you can see me trying to negotiate with Gemini on
related points in an earlier session here:

https://gist.github.com/matthew-brett/fac33f1b41d98e51b842f8bb84e8c66b

My point was not that AI is doing a good job here - it isn't - but to
offer it as a starting point for further research for the PR author,
and reflection for those of us thinking about copyright and AI, on
what a better process might look like.

Cheers,

Matthew
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