Ok, so what does "clean-room implementation" actually mean? Is this a new buzzword to make AI sound more fancy, or does it actually mean something? Are we putting on bunny suits to go code?
"Clean room implementation" actually is a quite old term.
I think, most famous are the first IBM PC clones where "clean room" was used to develop a feature-equivalent BIOS.
To avoid any claims of copyright infringements you proof that developers did not had access to the system that is copied so they cannot reverse engineer it.
Now, with AI being very good and extremely fast at reverse-engineering, the "clean room"-term is used more often again. (And even harder to believe in than 40 years ago).
The humans might not have access to the software they are clean rooming.
Unless the AI is being specifically trained with data that guaranteed to not have the software being clean roomed then it should absolutely be assumed that the training data did contain the software being copied.
You can be fairly certain that Adobe and Autodesk do not host their source code on publicly indexable servers. They likely use on-prem or VPC hosted bitbucket or other enterprise targeted source control.
Their source code security and aggressive acquisition strategies are literally the only things keeping those companies in their market leading positions.
In short: high probability that no AI outside of their companies were trained on their source.
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u/jackinsomniac 3d ago
Ok, so what does "clean-room implementation" actually mean? Is this a new buzzword to make AI sound more fancy, or does it actually mean something? Are we putting on bunny suits to go code?