If you use copyright-protected material or data, you should be aware of whether you are allowed to upload it to AI technologies. For many of the materials that the library provides access to, you are not permitted to share them with AI tools, such as electronic books and articles.
Whether you can share copyright-protected material with an AI tool depends, among other things, on the ownership that the AI provider claims over what you upload. If the provider uses your prompts in training the AI or shares data with third parties, you may not share copyright-protected material without permission from the copyright holder. You can typically find information about this in the technology's terms of use.
Examples of copyrighted material could be PowerPoint presentations or other materials used for teaching, which your teacher has prepared and made available on a course. Here, you must always ask for permission to use the material, for example, to convert text into podcasts.
Aarhus University provides an enterprise version of Microsoft Copilot for students and staff, which does not claim ownership over uploaded material, share it with third parties, or use prompt history to train the GAI. Therefore, as a student, you are generally allowed to upload individual copyright-protected and/or licensed texts to the AU version of Microsoft Copilot in connection with your studies.
Note that different rules apply if you purchase a GAI tool yourself. Different rules also apply if you want to use AI for text mining of a larger text corpus in an academic context. This is only permitted if the library's agreement with the publisher allows it. Therefore, it is always a good idea to look up the terms of use for the library’s e-resources in the library system.
Be aware that your own personal data and your use of an AI technology may be used by the provider of the technology—for both further development of the technology and for other commercial purposes. For example, your profile may be resold for marketing purposes.
You should never upload confidential information to an AI technology.
As a student, you may come across confidential information if you conduct field studies in a company or otherwise participate in a business collaboration as part of your studies.
This may include information about security, trade secrets, internal matters, workflows, and information about private individuals. Read more on AU’s page on confidentiality in business collaborations.
As a student, you are responsible for your use of AI in your work.
If you want to use an AI tool to transcribe your interviews, you should carefully consider the entire process in relation to legality and good academic practice.
Always be aware of:
Where should I store my interviews?
- Think about where you store interview data both before and after processing. You should remove data from the device it was recorded on as soon as possible.
- You must store your interview data on a server with a sufficiently high level of security.
- You should only store files containing personal data on DeiC Interactive HPC (UCloud).
- If you store files with confidential or sensitive personal information on OneDrive, you must pseudonymize or anonymize them. Read more about the different categories of personal data.
- You must always delete personal data when you no longer need it. Remember that your informants always have the right to have incorrect information corrected. You can do this, for example, by sharing the transcription with your informants.
AI technologies, such as chatbots, generate output in the form of text, images, sound, and code based on the data the model has been trained on. This means that the output you are presented with is based on data from materials that may be copyright protected.
If you use images, it is important to read the terms of use for the AI you are using. Often, these terms will be found in the “terms of use,” and copyright for the generated material will be outlined there.
If you use text or images generated using AI for exams, check what requirements are set for you, your subject, and your program. You can read more about this in Aarhus University’s rules for using GAI and on Aarhus University’s pages about exam cheating.
If you use images and text created using AI, you must always credit and indicate where you obtained the content. On the library’s pages about reference management, we have gathered information on how to cite GAI.
