Updates to our terms and new GenAI Policy

Hello Instructors,

We have some important updates regarding our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and Instructor Terms to share with you. We're also thrilled to introduce our new Instructor Generative AI Policy (GenAI Policy).

Why does this matter? These changes reflect our commitment to respecting intellectual property rights and fostering a community where everyone can thrive together.

Here’s a quick overview of the key updates:

New GenAI Policy: We’re excited to roll out our GenAI Policy, which explains how AI will enhance the Udemy experience for both instructors and learners. This includes:
- Details on the Instructor Generative AI Program (GenAI Program), including revenue sharing and opt-out options.
- How your content may be utilized in connection with GenAI models.
- Additional terms for using our GenAI tools.
Updated Policies: We’ve also made updates to our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and Instructor Terms to align with the new GenAI Policy and to clarify content licensing terms.

For a little more context on the Gen AI program, we wanted to highlight the following details:

With these investments in GenAI, we're keeping Udemy at the cutting edge of learning. We believe these changes will enhance the learning experience and create new opportunities for growth. Plus, they'll offer instructors benefits like streamlined content creation, increased course visibility, and enhanced learner support. Remember, our goal is to use GenAI to support, not replace human knowledge and expertise. We hope you'll join us in this journey to make learning more personalized and effective for all.
You can choose whether to participate in the GenAI program. This year’s annual opt-out period for the GenAI Program will be from August 21 to September 12. You’ll be automatically included in the GenAI Program unless you opt out during this time.

What do you think about these updates? We encourage you to read the full policy on our website and share your thoughts with us.

You can learn more about our GenAI Program in our Teaching Center article.

Have any questions you might have about the program? You can find the GenAI Program FAQ here.

Have any further questions or comments about the program? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Comments

ThomasMitchell

….you agree that Udemy also has the right and license to use your Submitted Content, and your Input and Output as described below, to: (i) apply, develop, and improve generative AI models; and (ii) create derivative works using generative AI models

Not sure I'm down with this. Someone needs to explain how this ISN'T building courses to compete with instructors - because this smells alot like "you agree that Udemy also has the right and license to use your Submitted Content, and your Input and Output as described below, to: (i) apply, develop, and improve generative AI models; and (ii) create our own courses that are based on your work, using generative AI models"

MrHJ

I agree that the genAI policy need to clarify the ownership of so-called "generated content".

Intellectual property laws/treaties/courts of all types generally hold that a copyright multiplied/added/subtracted/divided by a function still is a copy of the copyright or even the same copyright.

This means that the genAI policy implies that the signers gives away their copyright and other ip rights to other instructors or possibly Udemy.

This part of the policy needs to be clarified, in particular as the Udemy contracts and other policies clearly state that any and all content belong to the creators/ip-holders.

Regards

JohnBura

This is what I see when I click the GenAI Program page link

Are there supposed to be other options here?

HardyFowler687

There needs to be a very clear, very simple immediate opt out option. I do not want any of my content to be used to train AI. Period. This is not an unreasonable position. I never consented to this and I find it creepy and exploitative of the instructors. I'll be leaving the platform but I suspect that it won't be enough to keep my content out of the training model sausage machine. Udemy, in the clearest possible terms, don't use my content to train AI. A really sad end to a great 8 year run. Bye.

Jose_Moreno

I have the same problem with the GenAI Program page link, it sends me to the account details

Chrystie

@JohnBura @Jose_Moreno Can you let me know where you seeing the GenAI Program link that is leading you back to your instructor dashboard? I'm unable to recreate that error with any of the links I'm seeing in this post.

Chrystie

@HardyFowler687 I completely understand your hesitation regarding the GenAI Program. I want to assure you that there isn't anything exploitative about our program. You can read more about the guiding principles we are adhering to in all of our GenAI efforts. I'd also encourage you to watch the GenAI Product preview we held last week to learn more about our policies & the tools we are building to decide if they are right for you.

If you do not want to participate, there will be a very clear opt-out option starting on August 21st. You will receive an email and an in-product notification with instructions on how to do so starting on August 21st..

TJGuttormsen

I'm generally a big fan of GenAI, and I believe the future of online courses will greatly benefit from it.

However, the terms of this agreement are unacceptable.

My primary concern is that the text is way too vague regarding the use of the instructors' intellectual property and revenue sharing. It would be all too easy not to credit instructors for using their content, as well as to use it (as commented above) to create content that competes with our courses.

In fact, it would easily become very challenging to correctly attribute something directly to an instructor if the content is generated on content from more than one instructor who all say similar things.

The whole agreement is heavily weighed in Udemy's favor, and it would be nearly impossible for instructors to stay on top of how our content is used and address any lacking attributions or revenue sharing.

I find it very hard to see what instructors would have to gain from this other than to be included in this new thing - which I fear will make many stay opted in because they're scared of being left behind.

Personally, I will be opting out the day the opting out window starts on August 21st. At least unless some convincing and much clearer guidelines are presented, that demonstrate how this would be as much of a benefit to me as it is for Udemy.

And I really wish this wasn't the case, because I do believe that the merging of our courses with AI can benefit both us and our learners in incredible ways. But not like this.

Chrystie

@JohnBura @Jose_Moreno

Update: I located the link you both are referencing.

The link provided will serve as the Opt-Out link, but it will only be accessible starting August 21st, when the opt-out period begins. Apologies for the confusion.

JohnBura

Does that mean all of our courses are already opted in automatically?

AHardin

Like others, I have some hesitation with this policy for a couple of reasons.

Generated Content Ambiguity: First and foremost, "Generated Content" is referred to quite extensively, but there's no specific reference as to the extent of what it is. I feel there needs to be clarification as to what extent we are licensing our intellectual property rights to allow Udemy to do and not do. All-in-all, Udemy is getting quite broad rights to use and create derivative works from our content through AI. To what extent are we licensing our courses? What are the precise boundaries of "Generated Content"? Will Udemy use GenAI and our original material to create new courses or competing content in 2025 or 2026 as the GenAI program expands?
Revenue Share Ambiguity: The policy states that revenue will be shared with instructors participating in the GenAI Program if "Generated Content" is part of a paid service and "Generated Content" can be attributed to an instructor’s Submitted Content. However, there's no specific percentages or a clear formula for how this revenue will be calculated. With the UB instructor revenue share cuts, I'm sure this is an area lots of instructors will be interested in having concrete specifics.

Chrystie

@JohnBura Yes. You are opted in by default and will need to opt-out in order to ensure that your content is not used in any of our GenAI tools.

JohnBura

Between now and August 21, will any of our content be used to train the GenAI? Has any of our content been used?

Chrystie

@JohnBura

We will exclude opted-out content from our GenAI tools by December 31, 2024, and will notify you via email once our AI tools have been updated. During our pre-release testing phases, which run through the end of 2024, your content may be used as we refine these tools. However, we will ensure that it is excluded before any public launch of these AI features.

Of note, the GenAI program opt-out does not prevent your content from being used in features that use AI and are considered core capabilities of the Udemy platform. Specifically, core capabilities are functions needed to support the effective delivery of our services. These core capabilities fall into the following four categories:

Bringing participants to the platform (e.g., allocating marketing spend)
Matching participants with content (e.g., powering search and recommendations)
Facilitating safe transactions between participants (e.g., detecting fake course reviews)
Ensuring compliance and accessibility (e.g., providing learners with course transcripts)

I would encourage you to watch the replay of our GenAI Preview webinar as it provides more details about how/when your content will be used.

Chrystie

@ThomasMitchell As mentioned in the webinar, Udemy remains firmly committed to our instructor-led approach to learning. We have no plans or intentions of using GenAI with instructor content to create courses that compete with instructor courses. Our AI tools are designed to complement and amplify instructor expertise, not substitute for it.

ThomasMitchell

@Chrystie …. I know what was said in the webinar, but the terms clearly supersede what someone says in a webinar, and the term “derivative works” is incredibly broad, and certainly, from a legal perspective, would cover courses.

MrHJ

@Chrystie

A. I interpret your text as a promise on behalf of Udemy that accounts opting out will be removed before any launch of a GenAI tool or other use of GenAI? Is this correct?

B. I don't believe that the complaining accounts worry about Google or Bing indexing their landing pages or performing AI-rank calculus or text mining on their public videos content. Likely they don't worry about Udemy's already existing search tools either, rather the worst thing that can happen to an account is to be left out of those and denied access from search engines. In C. I will explain what I believe they partly worry about.

C. Udemy content generally consist of several layers of intellectual property belonging to accounts or used in accordance with licensing contracts that don't necessarily automatically extend to third parties beyond the account and Udemy's license - for example if the ip would be "generated" for another instructor, it would be a clear violation of the intellectual property. Other ip, are personal, for example many instructors use their own voice or own voice with augmented sound. Some use their own likeness - face, body, body-language, and sex. Almost all have made large investments in copyrights related to all types of ip, sound, graphics, words, code, text, etc.

C1. This concerns the scope of generated content, which is very fuzzy in the contract and not at all clear. For example it would be easy to write "generated content is owned by the account", clarifying that if you have your video and uses a tool to generate better sound for that ip or some moving backgrounds to increase interest, then the ip is still owned by you. The issue…

C2. The issues is the lateral movement of ip through the pre-generative transformer models and other types of similar models. In practice these models are often serially placed math networks that generate large multiplicative math models, allegedly from accounts ips and with no described limitations… the legal issue…

C3. Large scale network models have been tried extensively in internet piracy cases, perhaps the most well-known is all the cases with the ip-holders of the USA vs. The pirate bay. For example there is no real, physical, abstract, or even legal difference between a file-sharing network and GenAI-network. Which is also the real reason that all real big tech companies prefer to use OpenAI instead of acting in first person.

C4. Naturally, the lack of attribution of ownership (it is only implied that you still own your ip if it is included in the GenAI) and the possibility of other instructors or even Udemy itself using your ip through the GenAIs pre-trained generative models (a lack of limitation of use, and what type of ip is used) creates worry. For example if an instructor has used its own beautiful likeness in many videos and these are successful, the GenAI may determine that this particular likeness is mostly favored by students (ratings, engagement, and sales) and therefore mostly generate movies with an AI-ghost created with that particular instructors likeness or even an augmented likeness. Similarly with voices, lecturing style or even content materials.

D. To sum it up: C3-C4 presents enormous risks together with worries. These worries could easily be limited by clarifying who owns the generated content and limiting what content may be used for content generation. Also there are lots of newspapers articles currently described programs as GenAI to fail to deliver any real advantages and even using words such as "failing to deliver anything". Now most persons know that AI can do a lot of good, for example when it comes to create better sound or make .vtt files for Udemy, however when it comes to generate advanced or even simple teaching materials, it appears that Udemy needs to consider that large parts of the training pool may be low-q, bad or even erroneous, creating a biased training pool with content able to produce a model with similar quality output.

The announcement seems a bit hasty and adventurous with links with "white squares", and risks with almost unlimited danger factors, and risks of putting the company and instructor reps to the mercy of the machine learning stratagem "garbage in garbage out".

Wouldn't it have been possible to select for 500-1000 instructors and ask them to participate in the creation of specific tools with a limited scope instead of what appears to be an "uncertainty with unlimited applications and all your ip maybe not is yours anymore"?

Regards

Sabri C

In the webinar, it was mentioned that Udemy would not create courses that compete with instructors. However, the policy states that Udemy can produce derivative works using generative AI models, referred to as 'Generated Content.' If these derivative works are not courses, what exactly are they? Additionally, the policy mentions that revenue generated from this 'Generated Content' will be shared. My question is, if this content isn't a course, what type of revenue will Udemy share?

ElizabethEvans

So I can opt out on 21st August but Udemy can still use my stuff until 31st December 2024.

Why?

What will it be doing with my stuff between these dates? Why can't the opt out mean my stuff never be used at all? How do I have any guarantee that my stuff will be wiped in December? This sounds super dodgy.

JensC

In my opinion it is simply not acceptable that you auto opt-in and then only remove content at the end of the year if instructors want to opt out. This is a forced enrollment for 4 months and illegit use of content. I need to have the option of opting out BEFORE any of my content gets used.

My main reason is that I find the policy too vague, compensation questions are unresolved and it opens the door for Udemy to use my content in a much wider form than I would ever be able to control. So I am not in agreement with the use of my content beyond the current scope.

CarlosDeLeon

Udemy has said that they don't have any plans or intentions to use AI to generate content (from our content) that competes with us, but the policy/terms clearly allow it. They are leaving the door open so that they can legally do it in the future. For me, that is a big red flag.

If it is true that they don't have intentions of doing that, why not put it clearly in the policy/terms?

What is said in a webinar or in a FAQs page doesn't have any legal weight. The terms we accept do.

Chrystie

@ElizabethEvans Hi! I can assure you that all content from instructors who have opted-out will be excluded from all AI tools by December 31st 2024. In the meantime, your content may be used for pre-release testing phases so that we can refine these tools.

We will be sending out an email to all opted-out instructors once the content has been removed and the tools are updated.

JohnBura

So you're saying that we cannot entirely opt out even if we don't give consent?

SansaoSeara

@Chrystie @RyanJaress

Hi, how are you?

The terms are very confusing, especially regarding content generation.

Some people have said that Udemy has no intention of generating courses that compete with instructors, but the terms certainly leave room for this to be done.

And what exactly would this generated content be if it is not a course? Regarding revenue sharing, nothing has been clarified about the percentage and who exactly earns what.

"Udemy has the right and license to use the Submitted Content, as well as the Input and Output, as described below, to: (i) apply, develop, and improve generative AI models; and (ii) create derivative works using generative AI models."

What exactly is a "derivative work"?

And this raises another point: if generated content is not a course, how exactly does it generate revenue? In the text, Udemy calls it "paid services" for individual plans, individual courses, or UB, but what other service is or will be sold other than a course?

It also says that the terms may be changed at any time, and I am noticing that Udemy is having a hard time being objective in its answers. I will summarize my questions.

1 - Will or does Udemy intend to create AI-generated courses?

2 - Will this impact the revenue sources we already have, Marketplace, UB, individual plan?

3 - What are the derivative works that can be generated and how do they generate revenue? revenue?

4 - Will the marketplace, ads and organic sales continue to exist in their current format?

I would really like the questions to be answered objectively.

Chrystie

Hello Instructors!

Thank you for all of the feedback you shared in this thread and over the last week. We want to follow up on a few top questions to ensure you have visibility into how we’re aligning with our principles so that when Udemy wins, instructors also win.

No Plans for Competing Courses: We want to emphasize that we have no intention of using the GenAI models with your content to create competing courses. Your expertise and unique approach to teaching are invaluable to the success of our platform. Our focus in leveraging AI is to enhance the learning experience, not to replace or replicate the value you bring.
Evolving AI laws: The legal landscape surrounding AI is still evolving. We’ve included the right to create derivative works to grant us the necessary rights to use AI in ways that align with our initiatives, such as the AI Assistant and AI-generated learning paths. These measures are meant to remove ambiguity as we navigate these uncharted waters. Also, to reiterate, instructors will have an annual opportunity to opt out of our GenAI Program, in which case all use of your content will be removed from our GenAI solutions. Thus, Udemy has every incentive to ensure that our use of your content in GenAI solutions remains as valuable to instructors as we intend it to be.
Revenue Sharing for Attributed Content: We also want to assure you that when the outputs of our AI capabilities (e.g., AI Assistant responses) are based on your content, we are committed to sharing the revenue with you. We believe in compensation for the value that your content provides,

We understand this is a complex and rapidly changing area. Your trust is critical to us and we'll continue to maintain an open dialogue as we move forward together.

Thank you for your continued contributions to the instructor community.

ThomasMitchell

@Chrystie …. Then why not specifically mention in the terms/agreement that you will not create courses from our content? Seems simple enough to add.

Regardless of what you say here, the terms, as written today, allow Udemy to create courses from our content. That’s simply a fact. Why not alter it to clarify?

Also, more details are needed for bullet 3. As stated, it’s too generic.

MrHJ

@Chrystie

Questions regarding AI, laws, and contracts are complex issues which may be hard to explain or answer. The best course of action should naturally be to ask the legal division, the CEO, or the board/owners about laws, intentions, intellectual property, and similar things.

Now to the new questions;

You don't need to own the generated content or derivative works to create the products that are proposed. Actually any standard search engine is able to concoct a ranked list and choice from the collection of .vtt files should a student ask about some "arcane" concept. Referring to these lists doesn't require GenAI construction but only the ability to read the file and index it with some sort attached ranking preference etc. But you need to own that content in order to create new Udemy course or perhaps to list the intellectual property on Udemy's balance sheet. Personally I believe that that generating videos will be a huge disaster, the second part about the balance sheet is however very useful whereas the current licensing should be enough.
Neither the AI-assistant or AI-generated learning paths need to own the derivative works or generated content. And there are no unchartered waters. It is clear that training an AI on any copyrighted material creates an unauthorized, possibly illegal and unlawful copy of the material. The "AI argument" that you make say 1 unauthorized copy from each of 10k copyright holders, put the copies in the mixer, and distribute it to 10k customers with a 1/10k fraction or variable fraction from each copyright holder is just the same argument run by for example "the pirate bay" and other similar sites, possibly in new clothes as the new version delivers unauthorized copies from 10k copyright holders instead of 1.
The revenue sharing is currently undetermined, unknown, and uncertain. It is very likely that the GenAI won't generate income at all but be a cost. Instructors and other external dark interests may utilize their connections to reprogram the GenAI in the same way SEO companies operate. Very often large parts of the market flees companies which explicitly work with AI. For example there are boycotts against Auto-burgers, even big Tesla, and many other companies or authorities explicitly using AI, be it to chase customers or to deeply analyze their voices, reactions, and classify them according to education, interests, experience, etc. The GenAI initiative could very likely result in that only costs are generated and no income. Similarly there are dangers that established income streams are cannibalized or that the total flow of income to the company and teachers will shrink.

Under these circumstances and to ensure maximum enrollment or minimize the flight from the GenAI-program, the following changes would be useful; A: clarifying that the accounts/instructors own all derivative works and/or B: that the program is limited to a set of clearly defined applications with a defined scope and purpose, and C: define a distribution function for any income created by derivative works or generated content.

As it appears, it would be necessary to actually ask the companies leadership and owners about these issues because they need proper authorization and it is actually hard to believe that the board and owners would have authorized these proposed changes to contracts and policies given that such moves would, in small cases require the CEOs signature or explicit delegation and in larger cases require a mission from the board.

Regards

Henrik Johansson

Mufaddal

I agree with @ThomasMitchell Adding the terms explicitly that Udemy will not be creating competing content from our IP is simple enough.

ElizabethEvans

Also note that they are saying "competing" courses. This means they could create courses they "believe" don't compete with our work.

whether something competes or not would be a matter to argue in a court of law. As a small business, as I'm sure most instructors are, we wouldn't have the resources to take any claims to court.

The wording of this is very calculated. If they had the interests of instructors in mind Udemy would:

1. Allow an immediate opt out in August and not wait till December before handing back our materials

2. State clearly that there will be no courses created with our materials full stop. Remove the word competing and provide a definition of "derivative content"

3. Explain how they will generate revenue from AI and exactly what the split of the profits are (what % goes to instructors and how they will calculate which instructors to compensate)

ba0708

@Chrystie

"No Plans for Competing Courses: We want to emphasize that we have no intention of using the GenAI models with your content to create competing courses."

It's a clever choice of words. Plans and intentions are subject to change at any time Udemy desires. I'm sure the wording is no coincidence. A lot of our instructors don't like agreeing to "wildcard terms." It's not a great thing to do in general, but I think a lot of instructors are upset and frustrated by a handful of Udemy's decisions over the years (I'm being very kind here). So getting creative (or perhaps rather "aggressive") with the terms… let's just say that it would be nice to see Udemy at least try to build up some trust. In the end, webinars and community answers mean nothing; terms and actions do.