For AI data buyers
AI training data licensing terms
Quick answer
Plain-language definitions of the words used when AI developers license business data for training: usage rights, exclusivity, permitted use and preparation. Type a word to filter.
You retain ownership of your original licensed data. Under the signed agreement, SourceX owns the deidentified dataset, subject to your underlying intellectual property rights.
Payment timing and conditions are set by your signed transaction agreement. SourceX’s written selection permits an invoice; payment is due Net 60 from SourceX’s receipt of it. Unselected submissions earn no payment. Partial selection requires a mutually agreed reduced fee.
Your signed deal agreement governs that deal. General site terms, NDAs, buyer agreements and referral terms have separate scopes. Creating an account grants no exclusive rights. Previously executed agreements keep their original terms.
99 terms
- Agent trajectoryThe full sequence of steps an AI agent or person takes to complete a task, including actions, tool calls and results.
- AI training dataInformation used to teach an AI model patterns, such as text, conversations, images, audio, code or action records.
- API rate limitA cap on how many requests a program can make to a software service in a given time.
- Benchmark contaminationWhen test examples leak into a model's training data, inflating its scores.
- Call transcriptA written text version of a phone or video call, often produced by speech-to-text software.
- Chain of custodyA documented record of who held, accessed or changed something, and when, from collection to delivery.
- Chain of thoughtA model's intermediate reasoning steps written out before its final answer.
- Computer-use dataRecords of people operating software, such as screen recordings or click and keystroke sequences.
- Consent managementThe tools and processes a company uses to collect, record and honor people's choices about how their data is used.
- Data annotationAdding labels or metadata to raw data so models can learn from it.
- Data anonymizationIrreversibly transforming data so individuals cannot be identified.
- Data as a productTreating a dataset as something designed, documented and maintained for its users, with clear ownership and quality standards.
- Data brokerA company that collects personal information about consumers, often from public and commercial sources, and sells it to others.
- Data catalogAn inventory of a company's data assets with descriptions, owners and metadata so people can find and understand them.
- Data clean roomA secure environment where parties can analyze combined data without seeing each other's raw records.
- Data controllerUnder GDPR, the organization that decides why and how personal data is processed.
- Data cooperativeAn organization where members pool data and govern its use collectively, often sharing the benefits.
- Data exportCopying records out of a software system into files or another system.
- Data governancePolicies and controls that manage data's ownership, quality, access, use, retention and deletion.
- Data intermediaryAn organization that connects data holders with data users and helps arrange access on agreed terms.
- Data inventoryA list of the systems, record types, volumes and date ranges a company holds.
- Data lakehouseA data platform that combines low-cost data lake storage with database-style tables and governance.
- Data licensingGranting specific rights to a dataset while the supplier retains ownership of their original records and SourceX owns the deidentified version.
- Data lineageA map of where data came from and every step it passed through before reaching its current form.
- Data minimizationCollecting, keeping and sharing only the data needed for a specific purpose.
- Data processing agreementA contract that sets the rules for how a processor handles personal data for a controller.
- Data processorUnder GDPR, an organization that handles personal data on behalf of a controller and only on its instructions.
- Data provenanceThe documented origin and history of a dataset: where it came from, who authorized it and what was done to it.
- Data residencyA requirement or commitment that data is stored and processed in a specific country or region.
- Data sovereigntyThe principle that data is subject to the laws of the country or region where it is collected or stored.
- Data stewardThe person responsible for the quality, documentation and appropriate use of a dataset.
- Data trustA legal structure in which independent trustees manage data on behalf of beneficiaries.
- DatasetA defined collection of data assembled for a purpose, such as training or evaluating a model.
- Dataset cardA short document describing a dataset: contents, sources, collection, preparation, intended uses and limitations.
- Dataset licensingLicensing a specific, defined dataset rather than ongoing access to a system.
- Datasheet for datasetsA structured questionnaire, proposed by Gebru and colleagues in 2018, for documenting a dataset's motivation, composition, collection and uses.
- DiarizationIdentifying who spoke when in an audio recording, separating speakers into labeled turns.
- Differential privacyA mathematical technique that adds carefully measured noise to data or results so individuals cannot be singled out.
- Egocentric videoVideo recorded from a person's point of view, usually with a head-mounted or body-worn camera.
- EmbeddingsLists of numbers that represent the meaning of text, images or other data so similar items sit close together.
- Enterprise AIAI systems built for or deployed within organizations to perform business tasks.
- Enterprise dataData an organization generates while operating: communications, transactions, documents, tickets, code and workflows.
- ETLExtract, transform, load: moving data out of source systems, cleaning and reshaping it, and loading it somewhere new.
- Eval setA collection of examples used to measure model performance, kept separate from training data.
- Exclusive licenseA license where the owner agrees not to license the same data to anyone else within an agreed scope.
- Expert determinationThe HIPAA method where a qualified statistical expert certifies that the risk of identifying individuals is very small.
- Field of useA contract term limiting a license to specific purposes, products or industries.
- Fine-tuningFurther training of an existing model on a smaller, focused dataset to improve it for a task or domain.
- Golden datasetA carefully verified set of examples with trusted correct answers used as a benchmark.
- Held-out dataData deliberately kept out of training so it can test whether a model generalizes.
- Human dataData created by people rather than generated by models, including expert work products and human judgments.
- IndemnificationA contract promise by one party to cover the other's losses if certain things go wrong, such as a third-party claim.
- Instruction tuningTraining a model on instruction and response pairs so it follows requests well.
- K-anonymityA privacy measure where each record is indistinguishable from at least k−1 others on identifying attributes.
- Knowledge baseA collection of articles, guides and answers a company maintains so customers or staff can solve problems themselves.
- Lawful basisOne of the six legal grounds under GDPR that permit processing personal data, such as consent, contract or legitimate interests.
- Legitimate interestA GDPR lawful basis that allows processing when a company's interest is balanced against, and not overridden by, individuals' rights.
- Minimum guaranteeA fixed amount a buyer agrees to pay regardless of how much revenue share or usage fees would otherwise produce.
- Model evaluationMeasuring how well an AI model performs on defined tasks.
- Most-favored-nation clauseA promise that a party will receive terms at least as good as those given to others.
- Multimodal dataData combining more than one type, such as text with images, audio or video.
- Named entity recognitionNER: software that finds and labels names of people, companies, places, dates and similar items in text.
- Non-exclusive licenseA license that lets the owner license the same data to other buyers.
- OCROptical character recognition: software that turns text in scans, photos or PDFs into machine-readable text.
- Operational dataRecords of how a business runs day to day, such as work orders, tickets, approvals and process logs.
- Opt-outA choice that lets a person stop a company from using their data for a particular purpose.
- Personally identifiable informationInformation that can identify a person directly or in combination, such as names, emails, account numbers, faces or voices.
- PHIProtected health information: health details tied to an identifiable person, such as diagnoses, treatment notes, claims or appointment records.
- PII detectionAutomated scanning that finds personal details, such as names, emails, phone and account numbers, in data.
- Post-trainingTraining steps after pretraining that shape a model's behavior, such as instruction tuning and reinforcement learning.
- Preference dataExamples where people compare two or more model responses and pick the better one.
- PretrainingThe first, large-scale stage of training a language model on broad text to learn general patterns.
- Process supervisionTraining that rewards each correct step in a model's reasoning, rather than only the final answer.
- Proprietary dataData a company owns and controls that is not publicly available.
- PseudonymizationReplacing direct identifiers, such as names, with codes so records no longer point to a person without extra information.
- Re-identificationLinking supposedly anonymous data back to a specific person, often by combining it with other information.
- Real-world dataData collected from actual activity rather than simulated or generated.
- Red teamingDeliberately testing an AI system by trying to make it fail, misbehave or reveal information it should not.
- RedactionRemoving or masking sensitive information, such as names, account numbers or addresses, from a record before it is shared.
- Reinforcement learningA training approach in which a model learns by receiving rewards or penalties for its actions.
- Retention policyA company's rules for how long each type of record is kept and when it is deleted.
- Retrieval-augmented generationRAG: an AI technique where a model looks up relevant documents at answer time and uses them to write its response.
- Revenue shareA payment model where the licensor receives a percentage of revenue tied to the licensed asset.
- Reward modelA model trained to score responses by how well they match human preferences or task success.
- RL environmentA simulated setting where an AI agent takes actions, receives feedback and learns through reinforcement learning.
- RLAIFReinforcement learning from AI feedback: using an AI model's judgments in place of, or alongside, human feedback.
- RLHFReinforcement learning from human feedback: training a model using human preference judgments.
- Safe Harbor de-identificationThe HIPAA method that de-identifies health data by removing 18 specified identifiers and confirming no actual knowledge of re-identification.
- SOPStandard operating procedure: a written, step-by-step description of how a team does a recurring task.
- Speech-to-textSoftware that converts spoken audio into written text.
- Standard contractual clausesTemplate contract terms approved by the European Commission for transferring personal data from the EU to other countries.
- SublicensePermission for a licensee to grant some of its rights to third parties.
- Supervised fine-tuningFine-tuning with labeled input and output examples showing the desired response.
- Synthetic dataData generated by models or simulations rather than collected from real activity.
- Ticket dataRecords from help desk or issue tracking tools: requests, conversations, status changes, assignments and resolutions.
- Token countThe number of tokens in a dataset or text, used to estimate size and cost.
- TokensThe small chunks of text, often word pieces, that language models read and produce.
- Tool-use dataExamples of a model or person calling tools, such as search, APIs or calculators, and using the results.
- Warranty of titleA seller's promise that it owns, or has the right to license, what it is providing.