George Clooney, Hanks, Streep back new AI consent licensing standard

Hollywood heavyweights including George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, and Viola Davis are throwing their weight behind a new licensing framework designed to give individuals more control over how artificial intelligence systems use their likeness, creative works, and intellectual property. Called the Human Consent Standard, the initiative allows creators to set clear terms for AI access, ranging from full permission to complete restriction, with conditional access in between.

This standard builds on the Really Simple Licensing (RSL) Standard, introduced last year to let websites signal how AI can scrape their content. The nonprofit RSL Media, cofounded by Cate Blanchett, is now overseeing the Human Consent Standard. Other notable supporters include Kristen Stewart, Steven Soderbergh, and organizations such as the Creative Artists Agency and the Music Artists Coalition.

RSL Media cofounder Eckart Walther explained to The Verge that AI systems can discover the Human Consent Standard through a website’s robots.txt file, which already governs web and AI crawler access. However, Walther clarified a key distinction: while the original RSL standard applies to content at a specific URL, the Human Consent Standard “applies to the underlying work, identity, character, or mark itself, wherever it appears.”

A registry launching in June will let people verify their identity and set permissions for their likeness and creative works. RSL Media will then translate those terms into machine-readable signals for AI systems. “The purpose of the Registry is to give people and rights holders a trusted place to publish those declarations, so responsible AI systems can check whether a work, likeness, voice, character, or brand is allowed, prohibited, or requires permission,” Walther said.

Some celebrities have already taken independent steps to protect their identities. Matthew McConaughey trademarked clips of himself, while Taylor Swift applied for trademarks on a photo of herself and two soundbites featuring her voice.

With the launch of RSL Media, the goal is to make this protection accessible to everyone, not just the famous. “RSL Media is a simple, effective and free solutions-based technology for facilitating and activating consent,” Blanchett said in a press release. “It’s also the industry’s first practical solution where people everywhere, not just public figures, can assert control over how their work is used by AI.”