Cate Blanchett launches AI consent website for actors
Cate Blanchett has launched a new website in which actors can provide or withdraw their consent for their likenesses to be used by AI.
Amid the rapid rise of the use of AI across the world, but particularly in the film industry, actors who are against the technology have increasingly banded together to protect their art form.
Blanchett has been one of the most prominent figures at the forefront of the anti-AI crusade, and has now taken things a step further by launching a new start-up company named RSL Media.
The website allows actors and artists to sign their names to the RSL Media Registry, which sets “machine-readable” permissions as to whether they consent to their likenesses being used for AI purposes or not.
With Nikki Hexum listed as the CEO of the company, Blanchett is cited as a co-founder and co-author. The website’s biography says, “RSL Media brings together artists, technologists, rights holders, and policy leaders working to build open infrastructure for human consent and creative rights in the age of AI.”
Notably, when going on to read the RSL Media Human Consent Standard on the website, it heavily credits director Steven Soderbergh for making “many meaningful contributions” to the documents, despite him admitting to having used AI in his upcoming documentary about John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
In essence, RSL Media, standing for Really Simple Licensing, is seeking to streamline the process in which rightholders can publish restrictions for AI to train on or replicate their content, as due to rights typically being inaccessible to public technology, AI cannot currently determine who is the appropriate rightsholder, and therefore replicates content without permission.
“By making AI-related creative rights machine-readable and interoperable at web scale, RSL-MEDIA enables creative industries to protect their rights and receive fair compensation for AI uses of their work, while providing AI Systems with a scalable, rights-respecting path to innovate,” the statement notes.
It comes as AI companies such as Eleven Labs, with significant investors including Matthew McConaughey, have opened an Iconic Voice Marketplace, where celebrities dead and alive can have their likenesses and voices replicated by AI for commercial purposes.
However, for Blanchett’s part, she has been a strong critic of the use of AI across the film business, being among over 700 names to sign an anti-AI campaign back in January.
Never Miss A Scene
The Far Out Film Newsletter
All the latest film news from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.