Most of the larger LLMs state the results of the model stemming from the user’s prompt intellectually belong to the user.
It’s a massive grey area, and the sum of these kinds of cases are what will define ownership of LLM output for the next ~50 years.
Don’t get me wrong, kid absolutely did not comply with the spirit of the assignment.
E: @Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world makes an excellent point:
If the student hired someone to write their essay and the author assigned all copyrights to the student, it’s still plagiarism.
Who legally owns the work isn’t the issue with plagiarism.
If your circumstances change, you can make a lateral move and invest the net profit in an index fund.