Generative AI lowers the cost of reverse engineering, paper argues
Original title: Cheap AI-Assisted Reverse Engineering and What It Will Do
The authors say cheaper AI-assisted reverse engineering strains trade secret, copyright, anti-circumvention, misuse, and contract law.
Generative AI is making reverse engineering faster and cheaper, undercutting legal assumptions that cost and expertise separate permissible reverse engineering from copying. The paper says AI systems can identify hardware components, extract firmware, decompile object code, and clone apps. It maps those practices onto trade secret, copyright, anti-circumvention, computer-misuse, and contract law, and sketches possible legal responses and their trade-offs.
- Existing law treats reverse-engineering difficulty as a filter against copying.
- Described AI uses include firmware extraction, decompilation, and app cloning.
- Laws covered include trade secret, copyright, anti-circumvention, and contract.
From the original article
1 min read at arxiv.orgGenerative AI is putting the law of reverse engineering (RE) under severe strain. Existing IP and technology laws assume that RE is expensive and time-consuming, and that it requires specialized expertise. They generally allow it, but they rely on its difficulty as a filter to separate (permissible) RE from (impermissible) copying and theft.
By Ilan Mandel · arxiv.org
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