New Brochure from Creative Commons on CC Licensing in the Age of AI

Key Findings from the Brochure: “Guidance on CC Licensing in the Age of AI”
by Creative Commons is released under CC BY-SA 4.0 and was last updated on August 27, 2026. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22261032

• Creative Commons recommends sharing content as openly as possible. The recommendation from CC and us is to choose the most open license that fits your goals, ideally CC0, CC BY, or CC BY-SA.
• Switching to more restrictive licenses (CC BY-NC-ND) out of concern about AI use is counterproductive, because stricter licenses primarily hinder human use and reuse but do not prevent AI use. CC licenses can only apply where copyright law is applicable. In many jurisdictions such as the EU, US, and Japan, AI training falls under statutory copyright exceptions, meaning the license conditions do not apply in those cases.
• NC or ND licenses restrict researchers and other people, while AI systems can still use the content anyway. This shrinks freely available resources for everyone without solving the actual problem.
• The recommendation for science is CC0 (with attribution requested) and CC BY. Your own works should always be published with complete license information (title, author, source, license).
• Creative Commons is working on "CC Signals," a new framework that makes it possible to communicate expectations and values regarding AI use in addition to the legal license terms.