# CodeGenLink: A Tool to Find the Likely Origin and License of Automatically Generated Code

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01077 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.01077/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 18 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [CodeSearchNet Challenge: Evaluating the State of Semantic Code Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.09436/) (2019)
- [Large Language Models for Software Engineering: A Systematic Literature Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10620/) (2023)
- [Large Language Models for Software Engineering: Survey and Open Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03533/) (2023)
- [Unveiling Memorization in Code Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09932/) (2023)
- [Unveiling ChatGPT's Usage in Open Source Projects: A Mining-based Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.16480/) (2024)
- [LiCoEval: Evaluating LLMs on License Compliance in Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.02487/) (2024)
- [An Exploratory Investigation into Code License Infringements in Large Language Model Training Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15230/) (2024)
- [Trained Without My Consent: Detecting Code Inclusion In Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.09299/) (2024)
- [On the Possibility of Breaking Copyleft Licenses When Reusing Code Generated by ChatGPT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.05023/) (2025)
- [Do LLMs Provide Links to Code Similar to what they Generate? A Study with Gemini and Bing CoPilot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12134/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large Language Models (LLMs) are widely used in software development tasks nowadays. Unlike reusing code taken from the Web, for LLMs' generated code, developers are concerned about its lack of trustworthiness and possible copyright or licensing violations, due to the lack of code provenance information. This paper proposes CodeGenLink, a GitHub CoPilot extension for Visual Studio Code aimed at (i) suggesting links containing code very similar to automatically generated code, and (ii) whenever possible, indicating the license of the likely origin of the code. CodeGenLink retrieves candidate links by combining LLMs with their web search features and then performs similarity analysis between the generated and retrieved code. Preliminary results show that CodeGenLink effectively filters unrelated links via similarity analysis and provides licensing information when available. Tool URL: https://github.com/danielebifolco/CodeGenLink Tool Video: https://youtu.be/M6nqjBf9_pw