From what I have seen, the (US) courts seem to make a distinction between 100% machine-automated output with no manual prompting at all, versus a human giving it specific instructions on what to generate. (And yes I realize everything a computer does requires prior instruction of some kind.)
But the issue with copyright I think comes from the distribution of a (potentially derivative or transformative in the legal sense) work, which I would say is typically done manually by a human to some extent, so I think they would be on the hook for any potential violations in that case, possibly even if they cannot actually produce sources themselves since it was LLM-generated.
But the legal test always seems to come back to what I said before, simply "how much was copied, and how obvious is it?" which is going to be up to the subjective interpretation of each judge of every case.
But the issue with copyright I think comes from the distribution of a (potentially derivative or transformative in the legal sense) work, which I would say is typically done manually by a human to some extent, so I think they would be on the hook for any potential violations in that case, possibly even if they cannot actually produce sources themselves since it was LLM-generated.
But the legal test always seems to come back to what I said before, simply "how much was copied, and how obvious is it?" which is going to be up to the subjective interpretation of each judge of every case.