Copyright is not just one right, it’s actually a bundle of rights. Copyright protects how a work is used, shared, reproduced, or otherwise exploited.
Rights that make up this bundle include:
- The right to reproduce, such as photocopying an article
- The right to distribute a work, such as emailing copies of an article
- The right to create a derivative work, such as translating to a new language
- The right to perform in a public a work, such as enacting a stage play
- The right to display in public a work, such as posting on the internet
How does AI impact the rights that copyright protects? It’s important to keep in mind that nearly every action you take with an AI can trigger one of these rights. When you train a model or paste an article into a prompt, you are actually reproducing that work. When the AI gives you an answer, it might be creating yet another reproduction of the work, or creating a derivative work of one of the works that it was trained on.