Considerations regarding intellectual property, copyright, and AI:
- Intellectual Property: information or queries that are input into an AI tool may then be used to train the AI system and/or may be shared by the system beyond the inputters control.
- Be aware that the information you enter into an AI tool may be shared without your permission.
- Copyright Infringement: be aware that AI outputs may infringe on copyright law.
- Example: if a journal article has been uploaded to an AI tool without the author's permission, and, then you use that output, you may be infringing on the copyright of the original source.
- Example: if you upload copyrighted material into an AI tool without permission of the copyright holder, you may be infringing copyright law.
- Human Creators: because Canadian copyright law currently states that copyright applies only to works created by humans, the law is currently not clear about who owns the copyright of materials generated by AI.
- Output created by AI is partly human and partly machine-generated.
- Fair Dealing: the Copyright Act of Canada contains exceptions to its general prohibition on copying without permission. These exceptions are called “Fair Dealing”, and they allow limited and non-commercial copying for the purposes of research, private study, education, parody, satire, criticism, review, and news reporting.
Always feel free to reach out to the NIC Library for clarification: library.research@nic.bc.ca
Information on this page is based on the Guiding Principles from Teach Anywhere (NIC CTLI).
