AI Vocabulary · 08 Rules & Responsibility

What is Text and Data Mining (TDM)?

Automatically analysing large amounts of text and data. In many countries a legal exception that covers AI training, with conditions.

Intermediate

Text and data mining means letting software read and analyse large collections of works to find patterns. Because copying is needed for that, many copyright laws have a special exception for it, and AI training usually relies on it. The conditions differ by region.

In the EU, mining is allowed unless rights holders reserve their rights in machine-readable form, for example in robots.txt. Japan allows data analysis broadly unless it unreasonably harms rights holders, and Singapore requires lawful access and lets no contract override the exception. The UK has no specific exception for AI training, South Africa has no TDM exception, and India is discussing a compulsory licence with royalties.

Why it matters for you

Whether a model was trained lawfully, and whether you may train your own, depends on where and how the data was collected. Opt-outs and lawful access are the deciding conditions in many places.

Own it

If you train or fine-tune on third-party content, record its source, access route and any rights reservations. If you publish content, set a machine-readable reservation where you want one.

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