Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Xu, Weiwei, Gao, Kai, He, Hao, Zhou, Minghui
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.02487
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866916629566193664
author Xu, Weiwei
Gao, Kai
He, Hao
Zhou, Minghui
author_facet Xu, Weiwei
Gao, Kai
He, Hao
Zhou, Minghui
contents Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized code generation, leading to widespread adoption of AI coding tools by developers. However, LLMs can generate license-protected code without providing the necessary license information, leading to potential intellectual property violations during software production. This paper addresses the critical, yet underexplored, issue of license compliance in LLM-generated code by establishing a benchmark to evaluate the ability of LLMs to provide accurate license information for their generated code. To establish this benchmark, we conduct an empirical study to identify a reasonable standard for "striking similarity" that excludes the possibility of independent creation, indicating a copy relationship between the LLM output and certain open-source code. Based on this standard, we propose LiCoEval, to evaluate the license compliance capabilities of LLMs, i.e., the ability to provide accurate license or copyright information when they generate code with striking similarity to already existing copyrighted code. Using LiCoEval, we evaluate 14 popular LLMs, finding that even top-performing LLMs produce a non-negligible proportion (0.88% to 2.01%) of code strikingly similar to existing open-source implementations. Notably, most LLMs fail to provide accurate license information, particularly for code under copyleft licenses. These findings underscore the urgent need to enhance LLM compliance capabilities in code generation tasks. Our study provides a foundation for future research and development to improve license compliance in AI-assisted software development, contributing to both the protection of open-source software copyrights and the mitigation of legal risks for LLM users.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_02487
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle LiCoEval: Evaluating LLMs on License Compliance in Code Generation
Xu, Weiwei
Gao, Kai
He, Hao
Zhou, Minghui
Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized code generation, leading to widespread adoption of AI coding tools by developers. However, LLMs can generate license-protected code without providing the necessary license information, leading to potential intellectual property violations during software production. This paper addresses the critical, yet underexplored, issue of license compliance in LLM-generated code by establishing a benchmark to evaluate the ability of LLMs to provide accurate license information for their generated code. To establish this benchmark, we conduct an empirical study to identify a reasonable standard for "striking similarity" that excludes the possibility of independent creation, indicating a copy relationship between the LLM output and certain open-source code. Based on this standard, we propose LiCoEval, to evaluate the license compliance capabilities of LLMs, i.e., the ability to provide accurate license or copyright information when they generate code with striking similarity to already existing copyrighted code. Using LiCoEval, we evaluate 14 popular LLMs, finding that even top-performing LLMs produce a non-negligible proportion (0.88% to 2.01%) of code strikingly similar to existing open-source implementations. Notably, most LLMs fail to provide accurate license information, particularly for code under copyleft licenses. These findings underscore the urgent need to enhance LLM compliance capabilities in code generation tasks. Our study provides a foundation for future research and development to improve license compliance in AI-assisted software development, contributing to both the protection of open-source software copyrights and the mitigation of legal risks for LLM users.
title LiCoEval: Evaluating LLMs on License Compliance in Code Generation
topic Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.02487