> the shape of the code and techniques it uses were familiar to me from elsewhere.

Isn't this exactly what you'd expect an AI coder to do?

That's precisely the problem with it. AI, as it is, can be considered a lossy compression technique with multiple document recovery, convolution and interpolation ability.

Can't humans be considered a lossy compression technique with multiple document recovery, convolution and interpolation ability?

What is the specific difference?

How did you learn the shape of the code and techniques that you recognized? By looking at other code? Are you violating copyright when you are writing similar code yourself?

> By looking at other code? Are you violating copyright when you are writing similar code yourself?

In that order likely a violation, but it depends on the concrete case, always.

From decades of looking at interesting code.

I take care to attempt to not duplicate code; it's why don't use copilot.

> By looking at other code? Are you violating copyright when you are writing similar code yourself?

It's certainly possible. Back when Phoenix reverse-engineered the IBM BIOS using published sources with a restrictive license, they did it by having one team read the sources and write a very detailed specification of everything that happens there, and then another team used that spec to write new code from scratch. They did it that way because if the first team were to write the code themselves, it is quite likely that the result would be legally considered derived work.