High risk

AI Training Rights Grant

The contract may let the brand use your content to train AI or machine learning systems.

Show it
Look in the licence or usage rights section for "train", "training data", "machine learning", "artificial intelligence", "dataset", or the catch-all "any technology now known or later developed". The wording is often buried in a long list of permitted uses.
Decode it
Training rights let the brand feed your content into a system that learns from it. Unlike a usage period, this has no practical end date, and it is rarely paid for separately. It may also make it easier to produce material in your style without you.
Fix it
Ask for one sentence excluding training use. If the brand needs it, make it a separate, time-limited grant with its own fee, and keep likeness and voice out of it entirely.

What it means

This contract lets the brand use your content to train or improve artificial intelligence or machine learning systems. That is a different use from publishing your content: the material becomes part of what a system learns from, and there is no practical way to take it back out later.

Training rights let the brand or its partners use your content to build AI systems, a use that can carry on after the campaign ends. Once your content has been used to train a system, it stays learned even if the licence later ends, so a short usage period gives you less protection than it appears to. The question to hold onto is whether the brand actually needs this, or whether the wording was inherited from a template.

What to check before you sign

  • ·Does the licence mention training, machine learning, artificial intelligence or datasets anywhere?
  • ·Is there a phrase like "any technology now known or later developed" in the rights grant?
  • ·Is training use excluded in writing, or is the clause silent about it?
  • ·Is there a separate fee for training use, or is it inside the standard fee?
  • ·Can the brand pass training rights on to third parties or suppliers?
  • ·Does the grant end when the licence ends, or is it described as perpetual?

How to fix it

  • Add one sentence stating that the content will not be used to train or improve any artificial intelligence or machine learning system.

  • Make any training use subject to separate written consent, so it cannot be inferred from the general licence.

  • Where training use is agreed, price it as its own line, distinct from the content licence.

  • Replace "any technology now known or later developed" with a list of the named channels and formats the brand actually needs.

Negotiating it

A good opening

"I'd like to add a line confirming the content won't be used to train any AI or machine learning systems. Is that something you can include? "

When to walk away

If the brand insists on training rights that are perpetual, worldwide and transferable to third parties, with no separate fee and no exclusion for likeness or voice, this is a strong walk-away signal unless the fee has been set with that use in mind.

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Educational guidance, not legal advice. For high-value or complex deals, get independent legal advice from a qualified professional.