Devious New AI Tool “Clones” Software So That the Original Creator Doesn’t Hold a Copyright Over the New Version

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The advent of generative AI continues to undermine the very concept of copyright, from entire books shamelessly ripping off authors to tasteless AI slop depicting beloved characters going viral on social media. The sin is foundational: all today’s popular AI tools were built by pillaging copyrighted material without permission.

Even software isn’t safe. As 404 Media reports, a new tool dubbed Malus.sh — pronounced “malice,” to give a subtle clue where this is headed — uses AI to “liberate” a piece of software from existing copyright licenses, essentially creating a “clean room” clone that technically doesn’t infringe on the original code’s copyright.

The project is a tongue-in-cheek jab at tensions in the open source community. But it’s also a real product being developed by an LLC with real paying customers.

“It works,” cofounder and United Nations political economy of open source software researcher Mike Nolan told 404. He argued that if it were “just satire,” it would largely be “dismissed by open source tech workers who felt that they were too special and too unique and too intelligent to ever be the ones on the bad side of the layoffs or the economics of the situation.”

The process relies on a “clean room” design process that dates back to IBM’s competitors reverse engineering its computers by using two teams: one that figured out specifications to recreate its BIOS, and another “clean” team that had never seen the company’s code, as dramatized in the HBO show “Halt and Catch Fire.”

Thanks to AI, the process has become much more straightforward, allowing code-generating tools to replicate the functions of a piece of software without being exposed to its underlying code, thereby technically bypassing copyright licenses.

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