Guidance on Using CC Licenses in an AI Ecosystem - Creative Commons

"Since 2002, Creative Commons (CC) licenses have served as legally enforceable tools for digital sharing. Beyond their functionality, they also signal a commitment to open sharing in the public interest. 

CC’s general guidance has been to acknowledge and support all valid uses for each of our current six licenses and two public domain tools.  

When making decisions about which CC tool to use, we’ve long encouraged licensors to share their work under the most flexible CC license or tool applicable, while recognizing that some contexts call for added restrictions. This practice fosters robust knowledge and cultural exchange, which in turn strengthens our collective commons. Access to educational, scientific, and cultural content remains essential to society. 

However, that guidance was developed for a world of reuse by people, a premise that doesn’t fit as neatly in a world of widespread machine use of content through AI. 

So we went back to our own guidance and asked, “Does this still hold up?”

The short answer is: yes."