Use of MSU-licensed Electronic Resources with Artificial Intelligence Tools

The majority of MSU’s electronic library resources (e-books, e-journals, databases, streaming video, etc) are governed by legal licenses that indicate the terms for how the resources may be used. MSU community members are required to abide by these terms for the Libraries to be able to continue to provide the resources.  Many of these licenses prohibit the use of copyrighted content to directly or indirectly train, improve, or enrich any third-party AI tool, particularly large language models (LLMs).  Some allow use with AI tools only if the user ensures that it is done in a closed environment hosted solely for MSU’s use, that strict security measures are in place, and that none of the content nor output will be shared with anyone outside of MSU.    

MSU researchers and instructors will likely need to contact database vendors and copyright holders to get, and possibly pay for, permission to do projects that involve training AI tools on copyrighted content with the goal of creating a publicly available output.    

On the other hand, researchers may use material for these purposes that is in the public domain or published open access under certain Creative Commons licenses (please check the details of the license).     

Furthermore, any systematic downloading or use of spider, or web crawling programs on licensed electronic resources for any reason is also strictly prohibited by these licenses and could result in an investigation and in shutting down access to the content for the entire MSU community.  

The MSU Libraries, along with the rest of the library community, continues to negotiate these licenses, and there are several lawsuits considering whether training AI tools could be considered “fair use”.  However, our current licenses and contracts take precedence over copyright law and any “fair use” consideration.  It is prohibited and against MSU IT network policy to violate copyright law or our legal licenses.   

This is an evolving situation, so please contact Susan Kendall, Head of Collection Strategies and Copyright Librarian copyright@msu.edu or S.E. Pavlica, Electronic Resources Licensing Librarian pavlicas@msu.edu with any questions.