Copyrights and AI
This page contains frequently asked questions about copyrights and AI for students. Information for teachers can be found at the page copyrights and AI for teachers.
Copyright originates (throughout the European Union) only when a work is the result of the author鈥檚 own intellectual creation. The so-called anthropocentric requirement demands that it is a human who makes the creative choices necessary for copyright to come into existence. Thus, based on current EU copyright law, as GenAI-output lacks 鈥渉uman creativity鈥, there will be no copyright protection for such results. That might change when a human (you, for instance) makes changes to such output, as long as these changes in turn can be qualified as the author鈥檚 own intellectual creation.
See the previous answer: the anthropocentric requirement will not be met when it is an (autonomous) AI agent who writes a scientific article, thus no copyright will originate.
Article 3 of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM), and the national implementations thereof, research organisations such as the UU, are allowed to carry out text and data mining activities (TDM) for the purposes of scientific research, as long as they have lawful access to the (copyright or databases right protected) works used as input.
TDM is defined as 鈥渁ny automated analytical technique aimed at analysing text and data in digital form in order to generate information which includes but is not limited to patterns, trends and correlations鈥 When these conditions are met, AI tools might be used. Individual study purposes are not included in the TDM-exception of Article 3, although that might change when ultimately a 鈥渟cientific research purpose鈥 can be achieved.
There is a broader exception under Article 4 DSM that allows TDM for any purpose, including commercial uses - but this applies only if the content you're mining hasn't been explicitly reserved by the copyright holder (an "opt-out").
Both exceptions require that you have lawful access to the material (e.g., via a library subscription or legitimate purchase), meaning you can鈥檛 just use any publicly available or pirated content.
In short, if you're using copyrighted content with an AI tool just to help you study, the TDM may not always allow you to feed copyright protected materials in an AI-tool. Always check the terms of use for the content and consider whether the rights holder allows such use.
Same answer as above regarding ownership. However here, there is also a question of academic integrity. You need to consult the teacher for each specific course and assignment to what extent is the use of AI allowed and in accordance with the AI index.
Please consult AI conditions of use for more information.
You need to clearly state to which extent AI was used in creating this work. Please consult the AI conditions of use and the AI index for details.
When you use AI to transcribe the lecture into text (either verbatim or in summary), this transcription can likely be qualified as a reproduction under copyright (and neighbouring rights) law. Sharing a transcription for instance among a group of students or on public platforms, this constitutes a copyright-relevant communication to the public. This may generally not be done without prior permission of the copyright holder, most likely the lecturer or his employer. Sharing such notes without permission will very likely constitute a copyright infringement. Please also consult the AI conditions of use for more details.
Translating or transforming copyrighted material always constitutes a reproduction. Unless there is an applicable exception allowing for such a reproduction, you will always need explicit permission to do any manipulation with copyrighted texts that involves AI under Dutch law.
It is difficult to say what can be done retroactively. If you are using AI, make sure that use is permitted and that all instances of your AI use are properly recorded and attributed correctly in accordance with the AI conditions of use and the AI index.
Moral rights, being the right to be mentioned as the author; the right to object to change a work; the right to further publication and the right to make alterations to existing works, can always be invoked by a (human) author (in The Netherlands). Some authors explicitly allow certain reproductions or changes to be made, and 鈥減romise鈥 by means of for instance a license, not to invoke their (moral) rights, often under the condition that they are indicated as authors, limited to certain types of use. An example of such licenses are .