Q. What can I upload to a genAI tool?

Use caution when uploading any content into a genAI tool such as ChatGPT, Notebook LLM, and others. You may be infringing on someone's copyright.

In Canada, creators of original work are automatically protected by copyright. See our Copyright  for Students guide for a detailed explanation of what copyright is and what you are legally permitted to do with other people's work.

There is currently much debate in Canada and around the world about the use of copyright protected works in the training of LLMs, as well as who holds the copyright on content created by such AI tools. Clear guidance from the courts remains to be seen.

Regardless of legal rulings, there are also ethical considerations to be made around using content without creators being compensated or even acknowledged.

For now, we advise against uploading the following kinds of content:

• your instructor's teaching materials, including slides, notes, videos
• any textbooks, books, articles or other content that is NOT governed with a Creative Commons license or is not in the Public Domain
  • this would include the majority of the library's book, ebook, article and video collection
• any content that you have NOT been given permission to upload

You may upload the following:

• any article, book, image or other published item that has a Creative Commons license (unless it has a "ND" clause), or is in the Public Domain
  • for a list of what kinds of open licenses are acceptable for uploading, see our Open Licensing and Copyright page
• anything that you have created yourself 
  • be careful here that you are not sharing any personally identifying information!

Please ask the library if you are confused about what is ok to upload to a generative AI tool.