New from my team at Yale’s Digital Ethics Center: The case for contextual copyleft: licensing open-source training data and generative AI

Our article, “The Case for Contextual Copyleft: Licensing Open-Source Training Data and Generative AI,” has just been published in the Oxford Journal of International Law & Technology. The paper examines how traditional copyleft principles can be adapted to generative AI, introducing the Contextual Copyleft AI (CCAI) licence as a mechanism to extend open-source obligations from training data to AI models. We evaluate its legal feasibility, policy justification, and risks, arguing that copyleft can still serve core FOSS values when paired with responsible AI regulation.

_Reference: Grant Shanklin, Emmie Hine, Claudio Novelli, Tyler Schroder, Luciano Floridi, The case for contextual copyleft: licensing open-source training data and generative AI, International Journal of Law and Information Technology, Volume 34, 2026, eaag003, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijlit/eaag003 _