Why using Microsoft Copilot is important for copyright compliance

The University has enterprise access to Microsoft Copilot that is free for staff and students.

When logged in through the University's access, users receive data security that covers anything they share with the AI tool, whether in a prompt or uploaded as an attachment. This data security is important as it ties into a number of licensing and other potential options for the use of copyright materials with genAI, as outlined in the accordions below:

• Use under the educational statutory licence (S113P in the Copyright Act 1968 [the Act]) requires a closed enterprise system endorsed by the University.
• Use under publisher subscription/licensing agreements may also require a closed access system.
• Reliance on the fair dealing exceptions in the Act is more likely to apply to uses where a closed-access system is in play.
• University-owned materials can only be uploaded to an endorsed system that does not share material externally.
• Feedback for student materials can only be generated via an endorsed platform.
• Copyright owners are more likely to grant permission for use of materials with genAI where they know the materials won't become part of the tool's training data.

Where data security is in place, such as for Copilot, you also have greater certainty around uploading your own work if you would like to do so as part of a prompt.

For more information on Copilot see the Copilot FAQs from DTS (login required for SharePoint).

More around the use of genAI can also be found on the University's AI Tools guide.