> Darling is written in a different language so I don't think the LLM would copy paste code from it directly.

Just because it is written in a different language does not mean that it is a clean room implementation. The logic from Darling might as well have been lifted and then rewritten by a human or an LLM agent.

> Indeed, LLM code is now often better than human code, so direct code copying would be a disadvantage.

Is that why coding agents such as Claude Code and Codex have so many bugs in them? This is entirely dependent on the language chosen with the humans behind the decision to review and accept some of the changes.

> Humans are certainly inspired by other projects like this all the time and it isn't considered plagiarism.

Humans (researchers) also appropriately credit the work that inspires them, especially in experiments and research.