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What you need to know about AI and copyright

Generative AI has quickly become a trusted tool in post-16 education, used by teachers, academics, and librarians to summarise articles, create learning materials, and spark new ideas. But with these possibilities come serious copyright considerations. And people are telling us that they aren’t clear at all on what’s allowed or who even owns the copyright on generative AI content. So let’s delve into it.

An ever-evolving area of copyright

The first thing to understand about the intersection of AI and copyright is that it is an area of rapid legal and policy development and this directly affects how post-16 educators, librarians, and academic staff can confidently use these new tools in teaching and learning.

In the UK, the government recently conducted a consultation (Dec 2024 – Feb 2025) to gather views on how copyright law should adapt to the growing use of AI. Its report should be released any day and could impact policy and legislation going forward.

There are also live and prominent legal battles in play. One of the most high-profile legal battles in the UK right now is Getty Images (US) Inc & Ors v Stability AI Ltd, a case that highlights how generative AI can blur the lines of copyright ownership and fair use. Getty claims that Stability AI trained its Stable Diffusion image generator on Getty’s vast library of professional images — including some with visible watermarks — without permission. They allege that the resulting AI-generated images substantially reproduce Getty’s copyrighted content and database rights, amounting to a clear breach of copyright law. Stability AI has denied wrongdoing. A full trial is upcoming.

For educators, librarians, and academic staff, these legal cases and policy debates have real implications:

Using AI in education: Tools like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion offer powerful ways to create, summarise, and transform content — but they can also unwittingly involve copyrighted material in ways that might not be covered by fair dealing or educational exceptions.
Understanding rights and risks: The ownership of AI-generated content is murky under current UK law. If there’s no human authorship, the output might not qualify for copyright protection at all, complicating how you store, share, and attribute AI-generated learning materials.
Being proactive: Staying informed about these legal and policy developments helps you ensure that your teaching materials — and the AI tools you use — respect copyright and protect the rights of original creators.

Copyright law is not just a set of rules to follow; it’s a living framework that balances the rights of creators with the needs of teachers, students, and the public. As these legal cases and policy consultations evolve, educators and librarians have a key role to play in upholding academic integrity and fostering creative, responsible use of AI in learning.

Repurposing materials

While there are many areas of AI and copyright legislation that have yet to be fully established, there are some things to be wary of when using AI tools in education to repurpose materials, for example, to summarise or reformat.

Avoid uploading full-text copyrighted works. Copying and pasting an entire article, paper, or book chapter into a generative AI tool can constitute copyright infringement — even if it’s just for summarising. Fair dealing may apply in some cases, but it’s not a free-for-all.

Be wary of using AI to ‘repurpose’ third-party resources. Feeding learning materials, lecture slides, or worksheets you didn’t create into AI tools for rewriting or reformatting still counts as copying. This can be risky if you don’t have explicit rights or a licence.

Generating materials

While it might feel like AI-generated content belongs to you, it may not, and if the work has no original creation by a human author, copyright may not even exist — making it unprotected, unlicensed, and potentially problematic to share or reuse. Under UK law:

If a human authors the content with significant creative input, they own the copyright.
If no human authorship is involved, the output may not qualify for copyright protection at all. This means that if you prompt ChatGPT to create content and simply take that content as it is and use it, it may not be protected.
If you use copyrighted prompts or input (like a copyrighted song lyric or textbook extract), the original rightsholder still owns that input — even if the AI rewrites it.

Top tip: institutions and educators using AI-generated content should keep detailed records of authorship, prompts, and contributions. That way, you can be clear about what you can and can’t do with the output.

Copyright is not the enemy—it’s your ally

For educators and librarians, copyright is more than a set of legal landmines—it’s a powerful tool:

It protects your original teaching materials from being misused or misappropriated.
It helps ensure ethical use of third-party content.
It supports academic integrity by encouraging attribution, proper licensing, and thoughtful reuse.

Librarians and digital learning teams play a critical role here, guiding colleagues through copyright-safe AI use and raising awareness of both risks and rights.

Bottom line for post-16 educators

Using AI to support teaching and learning is here to stay — but it must be underpinned by solid copyright understanding. Before uploading or repurposing materials, ask:

Do I have the right to use this content in this way?
Is the content I’m generating original, or does it rely on protected work?
How do I cite, store, and share AI-generated content responsibly?