6Credit the creators of material taken from others

A resource created with artificial intelligence (AI) is rarely entirely new. It usually incorporates images, icons, sounds, typefaces, texts or programming libraries that have their own authors. The AI adds them naturally when asked for a result, and it does not always say where they come from or the conditions under which they can be used.

Recognising authorship is a matter of respect for other people’s work, and also a right. In Spain, the Intellectual Property Law, in its article 14, includes among the author’s moral rights that of demanding recognition as the author of the work. Free licences maintain that condition. The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence, abbreviated CC BY-SA, for example allows the work to be copied and adapted as long as appropriate credit is given, a link to the licence is provided and any changes are indicated.

Creative Commons recommends in its recommended practices for attribution that each third-party element be accompanied by four pieces of information:

• The title of the work, if it has one.
• The author, with the name or username of its creator.
• The source, with the link to the place it was taken from.
• The licence, with its name and the link to its text.

When the element has been modified, it is advisable to say so. A complete attribution would take this form: «Title of the image, by Author’s name, taken from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0», with links to the original image and to the licence.

The attribution must go inside the material itself, and not on the page that links to it or in a separate message. An educational resource is downloaded, embedded in another page or uploaded to a school’s platform, and if the attribution does not travel with it, it is lost at the first step. The minimum is a credits section in the footer or on a screen of its own, with the four pieces of information for each element. This guide does so on its credits and licences page, which lists the icons and the typeface it uses, with their authors and licences.

It is advisable to ask the AI which third-party elements it has incorporated and under which licence, since it does not always say. This is what point 6 of the VCER evaluation asks for. There are three cases that deserve attention:

• Images linked from another website. The AI may place an image by means of its address on another site, without its licence being stated. It is advisable to replace it with one whose licence is known and keep it inside the material.
• AI-generated images. They have no author to credit, but it is advisable to state that they are generated and with which tool, as recommendation 8 asks.
• Programming libraries. Each one has its licence, and some determine the licence of the whole. Copyleft licences, such as the GPL (General Public License), require the program that incorporates them to be distributed under the same licence. Others, such as MIT, named after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ask for the authorship notice to be kept.

When an element does not allow reuse, or its licence cannot be found out, the prudent thing is to replace it. The AI can propose alternatives with a free licence, and it is advisable to check at the original source that the licence is what it says.