AI, Authorship, and the Public Interest – Project Update and Call for Grant Proposals

As we announced early this year, we recently received generous funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, for our project, “Artificial Intelligence, Authorship, and the Public Interest.” We’ve hired an AI Legal Fellow, Justin Bonfiglio, as part of the project team. Our project will aim to identify, clarify, and offer answers to some of the most challenging copyright questions posed by artificial intelligence (AI) and explain how this new technology can best advance knowledge and serve the public interest.

Today, the Authors Alliance is pleased to announce the availability of research grants of up to $20,000 to support research projects at the intersection of artificial intelligence, copyright law, and the public interest. These grants are part of our broader initiative aimed at generating research that illuminates how emerging AI technologies and legal frameworks can be shaped to serve knowledge, creativity, and the common good.

We welcome applications from scholars working in law, information science, publishing, computer science, digital humanities, and related disciplines. As generative AI tools become increasingly embedded in the processes of writing, research, and publication, copyright law is being pushed to adapt. Ongoing litigation, regulatory debates, and global policy divergence have created both uncertainty and opportunity. Amidst this moment of transformation, we seek to support research that reflects and reinforces public interest values: equity, access, transparency, and responsible innovation.

What We’re Looking For

We are especially interested in projects aligned with our research priorities, which include—but are not limited to:

• Authorship and Ownership: What criteria should determine whether AI-assisted works merit copyright protection? What does meaningful human authorship look like in an AI-mediated creative process? What are best practices in documentation that will help authors demonstrate human authorship in their AI assisted works?
  
• Fair Use and Training Data: How should fair use apply to the use of copyrighted works in AI training—for example, how might nonprofit or research uses be treated differently from commercial ones?
  
• Transparency, Attribution, and Metadata: When is traceability and responsible labeling of AI outputs and training data most important? What should it look like? What role can cultural institutions play in this? How might the scope of liability for the removal of copyright management information (CMI) affect nonprofit or academic uses of AI training data?
  
• Incentives and Equity: How is AI reshaping incentives for human creators, and what policies might help maintain a diverse and equitable creative ecosystem?
  
• Public Access and Commons Preservation: How can copyright policy ensure that AI development does not erode the public domain or restrict nonprofit access to knowledge?
  
• Global Contexts and Comparative Law: How are international AI and copyright laws evolving, and what lessons can be drawn across jurisdictions?
• Open Source AI models: Nonprofits may be able to fine-tune an open model, but typically will not be able afford to develop one from scratch. How can we best promote competition and avoid market consolidation through a commitment to open models? 
• Opt-Outs: What do sustainable and viable opt-out systems look like, particularly when datasets can be separated from the opt-outs applied to that data? Are there unintended consequences to opt-outs that we should examine more closely?    

We welcome proposals that explore territory not outlined above, but will give priority to research proposals that are closely aligned with these priorities.  

Grant Details

• Amount: Up to $20,000 per project
  
• Deadline for application: Tuesday, July 1, 2025
  
• Eligibility: Open to academic researchers, independent scholars, or research teams
  
• Deliverables: A research output (e.g., white paper, journal article, dataset, or prototype), and participation in a public symposium (Details TBD).  

Successful proposals will demonstrate scholarly rigor, public interest relevance, and a commitment to accessible communication of findings. Interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches are welcome.

How to Apply

To apply, you will be required to fill out a grant application form, including a brief project proposal (2-3 pages) describing your research question, methodology, timeline, and how your project aligns with the goals of this initiative. You will also be asked to provide a project budget and biographical sketch of key personnel.

To submit your proposal, fill out the grant application form here. 

About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

We are social investors who support democracy by funding free expression and journalism, arts and culture in community, research in areas of media and democracy, and in the success of American cities and towns where the Knight brothers once had newspapers. Learn more at kf.org and follow @knightfdn on social media.