George Clooney, Tom Hanks, and Meryl Streep back new ‘Human Consent Standard’ for AI licensing

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FollowSee All NewsGeorge Clooney, Tom Hanks, and Meryl Streep back new ‘Human Consent Standard’ for AI licensingThis new standard will allow people to set terms for how AI systems can use their likenesses and creative works. This new standard will allow people to set terms for how AI systems can use their likenesses and creative works. by Emma Roth Emma RothNews WriterPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

Technical Details

FollowSee All by Emma RothMay 12, 2026, 4:00 PM UTC Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/WireImage Emma Roth Emma RothPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All by Emma Roth is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.

Hollywood actors and producers are standing behind a new AI licensing standard that will tell AI systems whether they’ll need to pay to use a person’s likeness, creative work, characters, and designs. With the Human Consent Standard, people can set terms for the use of their work or likeness, including giving AI systems full permission to use their content, allowing access with certain requirements, or restricting access entirely. The Human Consent Standard builds upon the Really Simple Licensing (RSL) Standard, which launched last year as a way for websites to signal how AI systems use their work.

RSL Media, a nonprofit cofounded by Cate Blanchett, is overseeing the Human Licensing Standard. The newly launched standard is backed by talent such as George Clooney, Viola Davis, Tom Hanks, Kristen Stewart, Steven Soderbergh, and Meryl Streep, along with organizations like the Creative Artists Agency and Music Artists Coalition. In an email to The Verge, RSL Media cofounder Eckart Walther says that, similar to the RSL Standard, AI systems can discover the Human Consent Standard through a website’s robots.

Industry Implications

txt page, which tells web and AI crawlers whether they can scrape its content. But Walther says that while the “RSL usually applies to content at a specific URL,” the Human Consent Standard “applies to the underlying work, identity, character, or mark itself, wherever it appears. ”AI systems will check this declaration against a registry launching in June, which will allow people to verify their identity and set permissions for the usage of their likeness and creative works.

From there, RSL Media will “translate” these terms into signals that AI systems can read.

This advance offers important signals about the future of the sector, and the tech world is watching closely.