Copyright for Faculty and Staff

Ensure that your use is permitted under fair dealing or another exception in the Canadian Copyright Act. For a course, if the use of AI is related to the learning objectives, it may fall within fair dealing depending on the context (University of Waterloo, 2024). See the sample scenarios in the next section.

 Any content entered into an AI tool becomes part of its dataset and may resurface recognizably to the source in response to future prompts (University of Toronto, 2024). Here are some examples to avoid: 

• Inputting a library licensed e-resource (e.g., ebook chapter or journal article) to generate a summary or analysis of it. This use violates some of our licences that prohibit uploading content into a third-party platform. Refer to this guide on using library licensed e-resources. 
• Uploading someone else’s image to change its content. It is a misconception that changing a certain percentage of an image makes it acceptable to use. 
• Inputting a student’s work without their permission. Students generally own copyright to their works. Please refer to the Academic Integrity Office's Resources to Support Research, Teaching and Learning in a AI/ChatGPT World. The resources include information on AI detection.
   

This increases the likelihood of an output being similar to the source or artist’s style. A substantial similarity to a copyrighted work is an infringement unless the use is permitted under the copyright law.

Do not input this kind of information into AI tools such as ChatGPT that anyone has access to.

Sheridan has licensed access to Microsoft Copilot, which prevents personal and institutional data from being retained in their dataset and exposed to the public. However, it is still your responsibility to review content generated in Copilot before sharing with others. Adobe Creative Cloud also does not use subscribers’ personal content to train their AI dataset.

Pay attention to the information related to privacy, copyright, and attribution. Note that the terms and conditions of each AI tool are subject to change without notice.

• Refer to Sheridan Library’s citation guides for information on how to acknowledge AI-generated content. 
• Be explicit on how AI is utilized to aid your work (e.g., for exploring a topic, generating content, or refining your work), if relevant.
• Many publishers have released their policies on AI-generated content. These policies clarify whether AI content can be used and how authors need to disclose the use. Be sure to review the author guidelines of the publication that you are interested in if you plan to publish your work that contains AI-generated content. 
• Keep records of the prompts used to generate the outputs you use since the information may be necessary for disclosure in your work. 
   

Be aware that you might not own copyright to content generated by AI if you want to integrate AI-generated content into your work for further dissemination or commercialization. Since copyright law traditionally protects only human-created works, it is unclear whether AI-generated works will receive copyright protection. For example, the US Copyright Office granted partial copyright protection on a graphic novel with images generated by Midjourney (read this analysis).