Oxford lets OpenAI train its AI models on Bodleian Library

The University of Oxford has partnered with OpenAI to digitize historical texts from its Bodleian Library, and internal documents reveal that this digitized material is being used to train OpenAI's AI models (systems that learn patterns in data to generate text and perform tasks). While the partnership was publicly announced as a digitization effort to make content more widely available, staff concerns about reputational risk and environmental impact were raised in internal meetings, and the agreement also allows OpenAI access to potentially millions of items from the library's collection.