AI and Copyright

Guidance from the University of Melbourne Copyright Office on the use of generative AI.

Third party material and AI applications

In most cases, you are not permitted to upload third-party material into AI applications.

Third-party material is anything that is created or owned by another person or in some cases another entity, such as an organisation or a group.

Some common examples that you may come across are:

Most library databases prohibit the upload of their content into AI – this means you may not use digital journal articles, book chapters, books, etc. that you have obtained from these databases.

There are limited circumstances where some third-party material can be uploaded to secure AI applications such as those provided by the University of Melbourne.

University of Melbourne AI applications: Spark and Microsoft Copilot

  • Spark is a secure AI application, which does not upload any materials as training data.
  • Staff can also safely use Microsoft Copilot when they are logged into their UniMelb Microsoft 365 account.

Circumstances that allow third-party material uploads

Under the following circumstances, some third-party material can be uploaded:

The Educational Statutory Licence

The Educational Statutory licence may allow the use of third-party materials with secure AI applications in the following circumstances:

  • When materials are available in a print format (not digital): you may upload a scan of 10% or one chapter of a book, whichever is greater; one article from a journal issue, magazine or newspaper.

Note that while you may be allowed to use some material in secure GenAI tools under the Educational Statutory Licence, this will only extend to your use of the resulting outputs of those tools for the purposes of education and will not cover any other use.

Further information is available on the Educational Statutory Licence page.

The Fair Dealing Exception for Research and Study

The Fair Dealing Exception for Research and Study may allow the use of third-party materials with secure AI applications in the following circumstances:

  • When materials are available in a print format (not digital): you may upload a scan of 10% or one chapter of a book, whichever is greater; one article from a journal issue, magazine or newspaper.

Note that while you may be allowed to use some material in secure GenAI tools under Fair Dealing for Research and Study, this will only extend to your use of the resulting outputs of those tools for the purposes of research/study and will not cover any other use. For example, publishing the research outputs from this process onto a publicly accessible site.

Further information is available on the Fair Dealing page.

Creative Commons

You may upload materials that are under a Creative Commons licence as each licence enables a user to copy the material. However, the use of the outputs from the AI application will be restricted by the terms and conditions of the CC licence.

  • CC0 licence: there are no restrictions on the way in which you can share the outputs produced from material.
  • Most other license types require attribution. Share Alike (SA) and Non-Commercial (NC) components place additional restrictions on how outputs are shared.
  • You must not share any Gen AI outputs produced from material uploaded with a No-Derivatives (ND) component in the licence.

Further information is available on the Creative Commons website.

Permissions

Documented permission, ideally in writing, from a copyright holder that gives a person or an organisation permission to use their third-party material in a specified way, for a specified purpose.

Further information is available on the requesting permission page.

Indigenous Cultural material and AI

Indigenous Cultural Materials or Indigenous Intellectual Property cannot be uploaded into generative AI applications without the free, prior and informed consent of cultural rights holders.

Author rights and AI

Can a publisher license works for the training of Large Language Models?

  • Yes, if the author of the work gave exclusive rights to their copyright to the publisher.  For U.S.A.-based publishers, fair use may allow some forms of LLM training without explicit permission, especially for non-commercial or transformative purposes. However, licensing is still sought in many cases to avoid legal risk.
  • For any content licensed under Creative Commons, further information on using CC-Licensed Works for AI training is available on the Creative Commons website

My publisher has approached me for consent to use my scholarly work as training data for generative AI applications.  What should I do?

  • There are potential benefits of licensing your scholarly work to train generative AI applications:
    • Greater research impact and broader audiences
    • Raised professional visibility, if your work is appropriately attributed
    • However, it is important to consider the legal and ethical consequences of licensing your scholarly work as training data for generative AI implications.  You may wish to consider:
      • How much of your work will be used?
      • Will it be used for commercial purposes?
      • Will your work be appropriately attributed, or will your work be anonymised?
      • How long will your work be used?
      • What rights will I retain?
      • Are you able to revoke your consent?
  • If you do not agree with the terms of the agreement or if they are not clear, reach out to the publisher to clarify or renegotiate the terms.

For information on how to cite the inclusion of AI in works and for information on how to use AI ethically and responsibly please refer to the following pages:

Are the outputs of generative AI copyright compliant?

If the AI output is sufficiently original and not a copy or close derivative of any one source, it's more likely to be copyright compliant.

Who owns the copyright of AI generated outputs?

  • Copyright ownership of AI generated works is currently unclear in Australia.
  • Australian law states that works hold copyright when they are original and if they are made by a human.
  • The Copyright Act (Cth)1968 does not specify how works are made, which leaves the Act open for interpretation.
  • The United States copyright system, unlike the Australian copyright system has a copyright registration process. In January 2025, the United States Copyright Office stated that it would grant registration to works that are created with the aid of artificial intelligence. The Office reported that copyright would be granted to AI generated work that reflected sufficient human contribution and that copyright would be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Fair Use, fair dealing and generative AI

  • United States generative AI companies are relying on the Fair Use exception in United States Copyright law to allow them to use third-party material as training data for their generative AI applications.
  • Australian copyright law does not have the fair use exception.  Instead, we have fair dealing provisions which would not accommodate this use case of third-party materials. However, trade agreements with the United States may influence Australia’s overall decision.

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