Original creative works made by human authors have copyright protection; currently, artificial intelligence (AI) tools cannot own the copyright to works. While AI cannot be a copyright holder, the use of AI in machine learning, text and data mining, and creative production has been questioned. Does the use of AI that pulls from other, copyrighted sources infringe on their copyright? For now, the answer appears to be "it depends." In higher education, faculty are figuring out how to ethically and sustainably use AI for teaching within copyright law; faculty authors are also considering how AI can factor in their publishing agreements. For example, training Large Language Models (LLMs) with open access content may fall under fair use, but using AI to make and sell a derivative of someone else's copyrighted artwork would be copyright infringement. However, how courts decide to rule on intellectual property and copyright cases will continue to inform our understanding of AI and copyright.
The U.S. Copyright Office recently released a 3-part report on AI and copyright that addresses digital replicas, copyrightability, and generative AI training.
The advent of AI has brought several issues and ideas to the forefront of higher education. Some topics to consider when thinking about AI and higher education are as follows:
As generative AI pulls from a variety of sources in its usage and training, questions concerning the ethics of generative AI have arisen. Traditionally, using AI for computational research, such as within the process of text and data mining, has fallen under fair use. However, some publishers are now attempting to create clauses that would, through contractual overrides, limit AI usage for computational research. Authors may be concerned about their copyrighted works being used for LLM training without their permission. This is a developing topic in licensing agreements and will continue to affect the world of scholarly communications. See part 3 of the U.S. Copyright Office's report for more on fair use and AI.
