Frequently asked questions about the AI extension

Kopiosto’s copying licence will be extended to cover the use and prompting of artificial intelligence (AI) applications used internally by organisations. Going forward, our licence will allow you to copy a work or publication to the extent necessary for the specific purpose and use the copies as prompts in your organisation’s internal AI application to generate an output, such as a translation, presentation or summary, for your personal use or internal use within your organisation.

An AI application used internally by an organisation refers to a generative AI application with access restricted only to the organisation’s staff. For example, use of the application may require users to use a password and log in with user credentials managed by the organisation. Alternatively, the application may be a proprietary AI application developed by the organisation itself that is not accessible to anyone outside the organisation.

Furthermore, the application may not store, share or use the content entered into it for the purpose of developing or training the application or its underlying algorithms, language models or the like.

AI applications used internally by an organisation do not cover AI applications that are available online and open to all, or applications that cannot prevent the content and prompts entered into the applications from being used as training material or for further development.

Our licence does not allow you to edit images with an AI application.

Our licence also does not allow you to replace the purchasing of original content. For example, you may not use AI to replace the commissioning of images from a graphic designer, illustrator or photographer for your organisation, to create new versions of images, or to replace the acquisition of original books, articles or newspaper or magazine material with the generation of summaries or similar outputs with an AI application.

Our licence does not allow you to create an output that imitates the style, look or expression of other works or content.  This means that you are not allowed to prompt an AI application to generate things such as an image that matches or imitates in look, layout or style an image created by someone else, or an output that matches or imitates another publication with regard to the look, expression and style of the text and images.

You or your organisation must check the terms of use and settings of the application to make sure that you are using an AI application with the option of disabling the storing of prompts entered into the application for later use. Please note that in most cases this option is not disabled by default, and the user has to disable it in the application settings.

Internal use within an organisation refers to administrative use, such as the preparation of a work assignment, the provision of information or communications to the organisation’s own staff via email, a closed intranet or by other means, or training organised for the organisation’s own staff. Internal use does not cover external information sharing or communications, for instance.

If you have copied text or image materials for a prompt under our copying licence, you may only use or share the AI-generated output within your organisation. You must indicate in the AI-generated output or in connection to it the source and author details of the work(s) or publication(s) used in the prompt and mention that the output was generated or compiled by using AI.

You are not allowed to share your AI-generated output with anyone outside of your organisation’s staff or include the output as part of a product or service, regardless of whether the product or service is subject to a charge or free of charge.

It is a good practice to disclose that the output is either wholly or partly generated with AI. This helps users of the output to distinguish AI-generated outputs from human-created content, to be critical of content generated by AI and to check the accuracy of the content, for instance.

Many organisations also have their own internal guidelines that require AI-generated content to be clearly labelled.

Furthermore, the EU AI Act requires deepfakes to be clearly labelled. Image, audio or video content that appreciably resembles existing persons, objects, places, entities or events and would falsely appear to a person to be authentic or truthful should also be clearly disclosed as having been artificially created or manipulated.

Any output created under our copying licence must also mention the source(s) used.

As the use of AI in working life increases, so do the legal risks associated with copyright in companies. Our extended copying licence allows your organisations to use AI legally in compliance with copyright.

Our revamped copying licence product also allows us to provide our customers with a legally certain licensing solution for complying with the Copyright Act in the use of AI.

In recent years, digital copying has increased across all industries in the private sector. Thanks to our extended licence, the opportunity to use works in AI application prompts will bring significant added value to companies, public administration and other organisations.

We have revamped our copying licence product. The use of works in the internal AI applications of organisations will be included in all of our copying licences for companies and public administration organisations going forward

Entering copyrighted material into an AI application constitutes copying for which you need permission from the copyright holder.

For example, when you enter a work, publication or part thereof created by someone else into an AI application as a prompt and ask the AI to generate a summary, translation, presentation or another type of output, you are copying a part of the work or publication and making an adaptation of it. Entering copyrighted content created by others into an AI without the copyright holder’s permission may constitute copyright infringement.

Authors and publishers have authorised Kopiosto to grant licences on their behalf for the copying and use of their works and publications in the internal activities of companies. Based on this authorisation, Kopiosto’s copying licence has been extended to also cover the use of works in AI applications for the internal activities of companies and public administration organisations.

The extension is included in our existing copying licences for companies and public administration organisations. If your organisation has a valid copying licence, you do not need to do anything. The new extended licence will enter into force on 1 January 2026.

If your organisation does not yet have our copying licence, by obtaining one you will also obtain a licence to use works in AI applications for your organisation.

We want to provide our customers with a legally certain, responsible and copyright-compliant solution for using AI within their organisation.

As the use of AI in working life increases, so do the legal risks associated with copyright in companies. Entering copyrighted material into an AI application constitutes copying for which you need permission from the copyright holder. Entering copyrighted content created by others into an AI without the copyright holder’s permission may constitute copyright infringement.

According to our survey of companies, almost half of all respondents enter third-party content into AI tools through prompts. A significant proportion of the third-party content entered into AI is copyrighted content, such as newspaper and magazine articles, scientific articles, excerpts from books or images.

Our extended copying licence will become available to companies and public administration organisations at the beginning of next year. The opportunity to use works in AI application prompts responsibly and with permission will reduce risks and bring significant added value to companies, public administration and other organisations. According to our research, works are already being extensively utilised in AI applications. Due to the licence extension, we will increase the price of the licence for all industries over the next two years.

Our pricing criteria are the same for all organisations. According to our research on copying, there is variation between industries in the amount of copying of copyrighted works and the use of such copies that takes place. This also applies to the copying of works for inclusion in AI application prompts. We have taken this variation in the amount of copying into account in the industry-specific prices per employee/officer.

With our comprehensive, easily obtainable licences, we want to make the responsible use of works as easy as possible. Users of works receive a comprehensive licence from one source, while creative professionals receive the remunerations owed to them for the use of their works.

We pay the remunerations collected through the copying licences to the authors and publishers of works through our member organisations, which distribute them to the authors and publishers in the form of various grants and awards, among other things.

Similar licences for the use of AI for internal use within organisations exist in several other countries, including Denmark, the UK, Germany, the United States and Australia. Additionally, similar licensing solutions are being introduced in other Nordic countries.

This type of use of works requires permission from the copyright holder. We offer a legally certain and comprehensive licensing solution that allows organisations to act responsibly and in accordance with the Copyright Act.

You can obtain an additional licence to our copying licence that will allow you to copy text and images from publications for the purpose of fine-tuning an AI program intended for internal use within your organisation. Fine-tuning means improving or adapting a pre-trained AI program or a model contained by it to meet the internal needs of your own organisation by training the model or program with the materials permitted under this licence.

An AI program used internally means an AI bot, agent or similar AI application that is used only by your organisation’s own staff and only for internal use within your organisation.

Fine-tuning means improving or adapting a pre-trained AI program or a model contained by it to meet the internal needs of your own organisation by training the model or program with the copyrighted materials permitted under our licence.

With our licence, you may copy individual works, publications or parts thereof, such as images, articles or books, for the purpose of fine-tuning your organisation’s internal AI program.

In contrast, our additional licence does not give you permission to collect or store works from the internet by using web scraping or similar data collection methods, or to use datasets compiled by a third party to fine-tune an internal AI program.

You are not allowed to share an AI program, application or algorithm trained or developed with our copying licence for internal use within your organisation with third parties as it is or as part of a product or service.

You can obtain an additional licence to our copying licence that will allow you to copy text and images from publications for the purpose of fine-tuning an AI program intended for internal use within your organisation. Your organisation must also have a valid copying licence, which you can supplement with this additional licence available separately.

To obtain the additional licence, please contact Kopiosto’s customer service team kopiointiluvat@kopiosto.fi.

If the copyright holder has prohibited the use of the content for text and data mining, you need a licence to use the works for text and data mining for purposes other than scientific research. If the copyright holder has not prohibited text and data mining, the Copyright Act allows anyone with lawful access to the work to reproduce it for use in text and data mining. In order to reserve this right, i.e. prohibit text and data mining, the copyright holder must do so expressly and in an appropriate manner.

The copyright holder cannot prohibit reproduction for text and data mining for the purpose of scientific research. According to the Copyright Act, research organisations and cultural heritage institutions with legal access to a work may reproduce it for text and data mining for the purpose of scientific research.

Our copying licence does not allow you to use publications, works or parts thereof for text and data mining. Moreover, our copying licence does not allow you to collect or store works, publications or parts thereof by means of web scraping or similar data collection methods.

If you wish to copy works for text and data mining for the purpose of scientific research, as permitted under the Copyright Act, or if the copyright holder has not prohibited text and data mining, you may reproduce the work under the conditions laid down in section 13b of the Copyright Act. Kopiosto’s copying licence does not give you legal access to the material as required by law.

Text and data mining means any automated analytical technique aimed at analysing text and data in digital form in order to generate information such as patterns, trends and correlations.

Under the Copyright Act, copyright holders have the right to prohibit the reproduction of their works for purposes other than text and data mining for scientific research. The law requires such a prohibition to be imposed expressly and in an appropriate manner.

The author or copyright holder may have prohibited text and data mining, i.e. reserved their right, in the terms of use of a website or service, the metadata of a file, or various restriction standards, for example.