[Somay-kousis]

Details:

• What a user sees: result.to_dict().clear() empties result, because to_dict() returns the OVDict's own dictionary. The docstrings say OVDict is immutable and to_dict returns a shallow copy.

  	master	this PR
  result.to_dict() is result.to_dict()	True	False
  d = result.to_dict(); d.clear(); len(result)	0	number of outputs
  result.to_dict()[port] is result[port] (same array)	True	True

• Fix: to_dict returns dict(self._dict). The arrays are still shared, so writing into an array in place still shows in the OVDict, as the docstring says ("modifications to returned values may affect this class"). The summary line now says it returns a shallow copy, in wrappers.py and wrappers.pyi.

• Behaviour change: code that added or removed keys in to_dict() to change the OVDict no longer does. I found no such use in openvinotoolkit repos (git grep over master, GitHub code search).

• New test test_ovdict_to_dict_returns_shallow_copy in tests/test_runtime/test_ovdict.py.

Tickets:

• Fixes [Bug]: [PyOV] OVDict.to_dict() returns the internal dict, so editing it changes the result #39178

AI Assistance:

• AI assistance used: yes
• AI tools helped find the bug and write the fix and the test; I reviewed every line. Validation on macOS arm64 with the 2026.5.0 nightly wheel, using this branch's wrappers.py:
  • The 2 new test cases pass; with master's wrappers.py both fail (len(result) == 0 after clear()). A deep copy also fails them, since the test checks the arrays are the same objects.
  • test_ovdict.py: 22 passed. test_sync_infer_request.py, test_async_infer_request.py, test_compiled_model.py: 221 passed, 7 skipped.
  • flake8 (max-line-length 120) on wrappers.py: clean.