To Mine or Not to Mine: Knowledge Custodians Managing Access to Information in the Age of AI

The article addresses the legal challenges surrounding the computationally-driven reuse of digital cultural heritage collections for the purpose of training large AI models. It examines the role of knowledge custodians, such as public sector actors like cultural heritage institutions, but also non-governmental commons-based projects such as Wikimedia Commons and Flickr Commons and intergovernmental organisations such as UN agencies, in managing access to these materials. Focusing on the EU’s text and data mining (TDM) regime, this contribution considers the impact of copyright and related rights on AI training. It further highlights the complexities faced by knowledge custodians in navigating access rights and copyright management, particularly in exercising rightsholder reservations under Article 4 of Directive (EU) 2019/790, with respect both to content that remains under copyright and such that has entered the public domain.