Who owns the code?

Under current U.S. copyright law, code generated entirely by AI tools cannot be copyrighted because it has no human author, meaning it cannot be legally owned or defended as a company asset. Teams that rely on AI to make creative coding decisions or fail to have humans meaningfully author the expressive work risk losing ownership protection, even in mixed codebases where only the AI-generated portions remain unprotected. Recent court rulings and a Supreme Court decision have solidified the requirement for human authorship in copyright protection, leaving purely AI-generated code legally undefendable.