Copyright and fair use are controversial issues in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). Educators should be careful of these issues and respect others' intellectual properties when using GenAI. This session gives an overview of copyright and fair use in GenAI, discusses its implications for educators, and provides recommendations for them.

The Topic Artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI (or GenAI), offers significant benefits to educators by providing resources such as units, lessons, content, and quizzes. However, even if used for educational purposes, GenAI may violate others' copyrights. Copyright and fair use are unsettled and controversial issues in the field of GenAI. As of mid-2024, legal battles are going on between copyright owners and AI developers. U.S. Copyright Office is working on an AI initiative to analyze the issues related to AI and copyright and provide recommendations to the legislative and regulatory bodies (Scheland, 2024). In April 2024, a Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act was introduced in the US House of Representatives to ensure copyright transparency (Albanese, 2024). As AI is being increasingly used in both online and in-person education, understanding how AI-related copyright issues apply to teaching scenarios is crucial for educators. This session will provide an overview of the current AI and copyright debates, discuss their implications in teaching, and provide recommendations for educators to navigate this complex situation. Generative AI refers to a form of artificial intelligence that can create original content like text, images, videos, and presentations. These AI systems are trained on large sets of existing content. By using learning techniques like machine and deep learning, they recognize patterns in the data, which enables them to generate unique content when given prompts. The massive amount of text used to train such AI models comes from both licensed and unlicensed or unauthorized sources. The primary debate surrounding AI and copyright is related to the use of unauthorized copyrighted materials to train AI models. In U.S. copyright law, any unauthorized or unlicensed distribution of copyrighted materials is copyright infringement unless it falls under fair use. The fair use doctrine has four main factors based on which judges determine whether a particular use is fair use or not. While some argue that AI model training using unauthorized copyrighted material should be considered fair use without questions (Wolfson, 2023), others say that fair use should be evaluated case by case, considering the four factors: the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used, and the impact on the market (Coffman, 2023). Both sides of the argument use the four factors of fair use to interpret fair use in the context of generative AI. For example, the first factor of transformative use is one of the major points of dispute in this case. Based on the first factor, the use of copyrighted work is considered fair use if it is transformative. One argument is that regardless of the original format of the training materials, they function as mere data during AI training; thus, such uses fall under transformative use (Wolfson, 2023). Others believe that the modified work should retain some elements or references to the original work, which is not the case with AI-generated content (Coffman, 2023). Similarly, opposing views remain regarding the other three factors of fair use in the case of GenAI training and fair use. Ongoing lawsuits against GenAI developers filed by copyright owners fuel the debate even more. One of the most significant legal battles in GenAI and copyright issues is going on between The New York Times and OpenAI/Microsoft (the developers of ChatGPT). The New York Times complained that OpenAI used thousands of their articles to train ChatGPT without authorization or financial benefits, and now ChatGPT has become a competitor for them as a reliable information source (Grynbaum & Mac, 2023). In April 2024, eight other U.S. newspapers sued OpenAI and Microsoft on similar grounds (Smith, 2024). When these cases are over, they may set a precedent for future copyright and fair use issues in generative AI. Meanwhile, the users of GenAI, including educators, need to be aware of copyright issues when sharing copyrighted materials with GenAI tools. Relevance and Takeaways This session will discuss the implications of GenAI-related copyright issues for educators from online, blended and in-person environments. For example, many AI tools require sharing documents with them to get more curated responses. AI quiz generators can provide different types of questions based on a particular text when the text is shared with the tool. However, this text may be used to train the tools further. Thus, if the text is someone else's intellectual property and copyright protected, educators need to consider the current discussions around AI and copyright before sharing the text with an AI tool. This session will provide several recommendations to educators on how to navigate the GenAI copyright challenges. For example, in case sharing someone else's copyrighted work with an AI tool is necessary to generate additional resources, one should verify if opting out of the training option is available in the tool. This ensures that any shared content will not be used for the AI's training. Moreover, using an institutionally licensed AI tool that protects shared data from training AI is recommended. Also, small portions of copyrighted work should be shared with AI following the third factor of fair use- the amount and substantiality of the portion used. Despite the unresolved disputes about copyright in GenAI, there seems to be an agreement among the stakeholders about one thing. According to U.S. court decisions and the U.S. Copyright Office, AI-generated content is not protected by copyright since it is not a human creation (Copyright Alliance, n.d.; Glover, 2024). Consequently, using AI-generated content in course design does not infringe copyright. Nonetheless, it remains crucial to acknowledge AI's contribution and provide proper credit to it. Style guides such as APA have offered guidelines on citing ChatGPT (McAdoo, 2024), which highlights the importance of citing AI's contributions. This session will emphasize the importance of attributing AI assistance to ensure academic integrity among educators and promote the practice of attribution among students. Engagement The audience will engage in the presentation using interactive polling tools like Mentimeter toward the beginning and end of the presentation. Participants will join the slides using QR and pin codes and respond to questions regarding their usage of GenAI tools and their opinions regarding GenAI and copyright. Toward the end of the presentation, the attendee will be asked similar questions regarding AI and copyright to see whether their opinions have changed after attending the presentation. Finally, during the Q&A session, they will be able to share their thoughts regarding the topic along with asking questions to the presenters. References Albanese, A. (2024, April 15). Schiff introduces bill to require transparency in AI training. Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/94819-schiff-introduces-bill-to-require-transparency-in-ai-training.html Coffman, C. (2023, April 11). Does the use of copyrighted works to train AI qualify as a fair use? Copyright alliance. https://copyrightalliance.org/copyrighted-works-training-ai-fair-use/ Copyright Alliance. (n.d.). Is AI-generated output protected by copyright? Copyright alliance. https://copyrightalliance.org/faqs/is-ai-generated-protected-by-copyright/ Glover, E., & Urwin, M. (2024, February 28). AI and copyright law: What we know. Built In. https://builtin.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-copyright Grynbaum, M. M., & Mac, R. (2023, December 27). The Times sues OpenAI and Microsoft over A.I. use of copyrighted work. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/business/media/new-york-times-open-ai-microsoft-lawsuit.html McAdoo, T. (2024, February 23). How to cite ChatGPT. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/how-to-cite-chatgpt Scheland, N. (2024, March 26). Looking forward: The U.S. Copyright Office’s AI initiative in 2024. Library of Congress Blogs. https://blogs.loc.gov/copyright/2024/03/looking-forward-the-u-s-copyright-offices-ai-initiative-in-2024/ Smith, D. (2024, April 30). Eight newspaper publishers sue OpenAI over copyright infringement. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/30/eight-newspaper-publishers-sue-openai-over-copyright-infringement.html Wolfson, S. (2023, February 17). Fair use: Training generative AI. Creative commons. https://creativecommons.org/2023/02/17/fair-use-training-generative-ai/