Q. Copyright implications of using AI software to process or analyse third party material

Summary:

• If you do not own the copyright for the material, you cannot upload any material into an AI tool without permission if the tool will save or scrape the content
• You can use AI tools to create learning material for private study or for classroom use if it is a subscribed tool that will not save the content or use it for training/tuning the tool (do not use free tools)
• JCU teaching materials should only be uploaded into tools JCU subscribes to
• You can use the output generated by the tools for personal study or for classroom use if you ensure it falls under the "fair dealings" or Statutory Licence conditions. Do not make the output public unless you are sure it does not contain any copyrighted material
• Outputs that are completely generated by the AI that do not include any of the source material's content are okay to make public under current copyright laws, but beware of the tool's terms and conditions
• Always cite your sources, even if the AI tool creates something completely unique

More detail:

Under current copyright law, you cannot grant another party permission to have or make a copy of material unless you own the copyright or have permission from the copyright owner to share it.

Many AI tools work by storing and "scraping" the content you upload into them as "prompts". They then keep a copy of that content in their systems and use it to train their AI models. If this is the case, then it is against copyright law for you to upload any content you do not own or have permission to share. Tools that are "free" are particularly problematic, and we advise that you never upload any material you do not own into these tools.

Other AI tools do not save the content or use it for training/tuning purposes. These tools can be used to analyse, summarise or create accompanying material (e.g. work sheets) for third party content that you do not own.

Always check the terms and conditions of the tool you intend to use before uploading any material into the tool as a prompt, as the companies update and change their terms of service regularly.

Uploading third party material

Make sure you check how the tool stores, uses and makes available any material you upload into it before uploading third party material (such as journal articles).

Be aware that there are differences in the privacy policies between the free and subscribed versions of tools. For example, at JCU you can use the JCU subscription to Copilot to process third party material to create study aides or teaching resources, but you cannot use the free version of Copilot that comes with Edge or other Office products as it is not covered under our agreements.

The JCU subscription to Copilot is currently only available to staff involved in the trial programme, and is only available when signed in to Office products and Edge using your JCU credentials.

Uploading material owned by JCU

Content owned by JCU, or created for JCU classes and coursework, should not be uploaded into an AI tool that JCU does not subscribe to, unless you are sure it does not retain a copy or use it to train the AI model.

For example, you cannot upload all of your lecture slides into the free version of Google Gemini and ask it to generate flash cards for you. But you may be able to use the paid version of Gemini or another tool to do this if you check the terms and conditions and they state the tool does not keep the prompt material for training/tuning purposes.

Uploading your own material

You may upload any material you have created for which you are the sole owner of copyright and intellectual property. However, we advise looking at the terms and conditions of the tool you are using to see what permissions you are granting the company behind the AI tool by uploading your material as prompts, to make sure you are comfortable with the potential use of that material by the company (and its other clients) in the future.

Using the outputs

Generally speaking:

• outputs created for your own personal study or research are within the bounds of "fair dealing" in copyright,
• outputs that only use a "reasonable amount" of the source material that are used for teaching purposes are covered by the Statutory Licence, so long as their use falls under the conditions of the Licence.

However, if the output of the material contains copyrighted content, you cannot make it available to other people unless you own the copyright of the original material or you have permission to make and share adaptations (or you are using material with a Creative Commons licence, or similar, that allows adaptation).

You are responsible for what you do with the output generated by the AI tool, so if it contains material that is taken from the sources that were scraped or processed to create it, you must take care to avoid copyright breaches.

Material that is completely created by an AI tool (even if it uses information from other sources) is not currently covered by copyright in Australia, but may be covered by the terms of use for the tool itself. Make sure you check what you agree to when you use the tool.

You will always need to cite the source of your information, even if the tool creates a completely unique output.