Trad AI OpenAI API Licensing for Machine Translation

1. Ownership

Your input stays yours. You keep all rights in the source text; OpenAI only receives a temporary, limited license to process it.

The output is immediately yours. OpenAI assigns to you “all right, title, and interest” in every translation it generates. You may publish, sell, sublicense, or otherwise exploit the translated text without paying royalties to OpenAI.

2. Permitted commercial use

Because you own the output, you can:

republish translations in books, websites, apps, or subtitles;

offer professional MT-post-editing services;

build commercial products that incorporate or resell the translated content.

OpenAI imposes no branding or share-alike requirement—only general compliance with the service Terms and Usage Policies.

3. Data usage, storage, and retention

No model training by default. Your API traffic is not used to train or fine-tune OpenAI models unless you explicitly opt in.

Short log window. API request logs are kept for ≤ 30 days solely to detect abuse, then permanently deleted.

Zero-retention option. Enterprise and certain endpoints let you request “Zero Data Retention,” under which logs are discarded almost immediately.

4. Regional storage (Data Residency)

If your organisation must keep data inside a jurisdiction (e.g., EU or US), you can create an API project locked to that region. All inference and at-rest storage for that project remain in the chosen geography.

5. Responsibility for source material

You warrant that you have the legal right to provide the text. If the original work is copyrighted, verify that you are authorised (by license or statutory exception) to create and distribute a derivative translation.

6. Content restrictions

All usage must respect the OpenAI Usage Policies. Translations that facilitate illegal activity, violate privacy, or contain disallowed content may lead to warnings or suspension.

7. Good practice checklist for translators and LSPs

This operation are to be done in your OpenAI account.

Set temperature=0 to avoid creative drift.

Store project-level glossaries and send them with each request for terminology control.

For sensitive or regulated material, enable Zero Data Retention or an on-premise proxy.

Keep an auditable record of input and output pairs if clients require traceability.

Source documents

OpenAI Business Terms – https://openai.com/policies/business-terms

OpenAI Terms of Use (global & EU variants) – https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use

OpenAI Usage Policies – https://openai.com/policies/usage-policies

“Will OpenAI claim copyright over what outputs I generate with the API?” – https://help.openai.com/en/articles/5008634-will-openai-claim-copyright-over-what-outputs-i-generate-with-the-api

“How your data is used to improve model performance” – https://help.openai.com/en/articles/5722486-how-your-data-is-used-to-improve-model-performance

Data Controls FAQ (30-day retention window) – https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7730893-data-controls-faq

Data Residency for the OpenAI API – https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10503543-data-residency-for-the-openai-api

Batch API FAQ (zero data retention note) – https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9197833-batch-api-faq

These links contain the binding language on ownership, data handling, and acceptable-use requirements referenced above.