Materials shared under Creative Commons and other open licences

You may be able to rely on the Creative Commons (CC) licensing attached to copyright materials for certain uses with genAI tools, as CC licences generally allow for sharing and reproduction.

Some uses with genAI may be limited, depending on the CC licensing involved, for example:

• the ‘NC’ element limits potential commercial use. This may restrict use with some genAI tools, especially where prompts are used to train commercial AI models. It may also limit certain uses of outputs,
• the ‘ND’ element doesn’t allow for the sharing of derivative works / adaptations, and
• the ‘SA’ element requires the same or compatible licensing to be attached to any derivative works.

Also remember that CC-licensed materials incorporated into genAI outputs will require attribution.

Note that Creative Commons works within copyright. Where a copyright exception exists that would allow for the use of copyright materials with genAI, any restrictions associated with a CC licence on the material will not apply. This is because where a user can rely on an exception in legislation, the CC licence will not be triggered by the use. See the flowchart reproduced below and the FAQs for CC licensing for more information. Use under a copyright exception will generally still require attribution so the 'BY' element should always be honoured as best practice.

For materials released under CC0 or flagged with the Public Domain Mark (the CC public domain tools), see the Public domain materials accordion below.

Requirements for other open licensing schemes (such as for software) may vary – check the licensing terms to confirm what uses will be allowed.

Have a question? Contact the Copyright Advisor

AI and CC Licenses v5 flowchart by Creative Commons is licensed under CC BY 4.0