# Grounding license

URL: https://sellmydatatoai.net/glossary/grounding-license

A grounding license permits an AI company to use content at the moment of answering, to support or cite responses, rather than to train a model.

A grounding license is a content license that lets an AI provider retrieve and show the licensor's content when answering users, usually through [retrieval-augmented generation](https://sellmydatatoai.net/glossary/retrieval-augmented-generation) or a search index, without necessarily granting rights to train on it. Grounding keeps answers current and gives the model sources to cite.

## What does a grounding license look like in practice?

News deals show the pattern. In January 2025 Google signed a deal with the Associated Press to deliver up-to-date news in its Gemini chatbot, [as AP reported](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/google-signs-deal-with-ap-to-deliver-up-to-date-news-through-its-gemini-ai-chatbot), and the report did not say whether training was included. Google also treats grounding as a separate use in its crawler controls: its [Google-Extended](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-common-crawlers) token covers both Gemini training and providing Search content to the model at prompt time.

## What terms matter in a grounding license?

- Whether training is excluded, permitted or licensed separately
- Attribution, linking and display limits on how much text appears in an answer
- Update frequency and the archive depth the buyer can query
- Recurring fees and what happens to cached content when the license ends

See the [AI data deals tracker](https://sellmydatatoai.net/ai-data-deals) for published grounding and training deals.