Hollywood Voices Drive a New Standard for AI Consent
George Clooney, Tom Hanks, and Meryl Streep have publicly backed the Human Consent Standard, a new licensing approach designed to tell AI systems whether they need permission — or payment — to use a person’s likeness, characters, designs, or creative works. Launched by RSL Media, the standard extends the Really Simple Licensing (RSL) idea that lets creators and rights-holders communicate usage terms directly to AI consumers.
The Human Consent Standard allows individuals and organizations to set clear levels of access: full permission, conditional access (for example, requiring attribution or payment), or outright restriction. By encoding these choices in a machine-readable way, it gives AI developers a straightforward signal about how to treat specific content during training and generation.
Why this matters: clear, standardized consent helps prevent unauthorized uses of likenesses and creative works and creates practical pathways for fair compensation and attribution. Celebrity endorsement helps accelerate industry attention and adoption, increasing the chance that platforms and AI providers will honor these signals.
As the standard gains traction, it could become a common part of how websites, talent representatives, and platforms label content — making AI systems more respectful of creators’ rights and giving people more control over their digital identities. For creators and developers alike, the Human Consent Standard is a pragmatic step toward more ethical, transparent AI use.