Research Guides: Authors' Rights & Copyright: Publishers licensing your work for AI Training

Author's Alliance Initial Guidance

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning Learning, Large Language Models etc are an emerging area of concern for authors. We will try to update this page as additional guidance becomes available.

What happens when your publisher licenses your work for AI training?
The Author's Alliance blog has some guidance and general information about publishers licensing content for AI training.
Authors Guild model clause to prohibit the use of an author’s work for training artificial intelligence technologies
Authors Guild has drafted a new model clause to prohibit the use of an author’s work for training artificial intelligence technologies without the author’s express permission.

Part 1: Report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence
In early 2023, the Copyright Office launched an initiative examining copyright law and policy issues raised by artificial intelligence (AI), including the scope of copyright in AI-generated works and the use of copyrighted materials in AI training. After hosting public listening sessions and webinars, the Office published a notice of inquiry in the Federal Register in August 2023, which received over 10,000 comments by December 2023.

The Office is issuing a Report in several Parts analyzing the issues, which will be published as they are completed. On July 31, 2024, the Office published Part 1 of the Report, which addresses the topic of digital replicas.
Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Part 2: Copyrightability
On January 29, 2025, the U.S. Copyright Office is releasing Part 2 of its Report on the legal and policy issues related to copyright and artificial intelligence (AI). This Part of the Report addresses the copyrightability of outputs created using generative AI. The Office affirms that existing principles of copyright law are flexible enough to apply to this new technology, as they have applied to technological innovations in the past. It concludes that the outputs of generative AI can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements.
Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Part 3: Generative AI Training pre-publication version
On May 9, 2025, the Office released a pre-publication version of Part 3 in response to congressional inquiries and expressions of interest from stakeholders. A final version of Part 3 will be published in the future, without any substantive changes expected in the analysis or conclusions.