Cate Blanchett has co-founded a new nonprofit aimed at solving one of AI’s most urgent unsolved problems: the ability for any person to control how their work, likeness, and identity are used by artificial intelligence systems.

RSL Media launched Tuesday as a public benefit nonprofit, built around a deceptively simple idea: Human consent should function like a traffic light—allowed, allowed with terms, or prohibited—that AI systems can actually read and respect. The organization has already secured support from a roster of A-list entertainment figures including Javier Bardem, George Clooney, Viola Davis, Tom Hanks, Dame Helen Mirren, Steven Soderbergh, Kristen Stewart, Meryl Streep, and Dame Emma Thompson, as well as Creative Artists Agency and the Music Artists Coalition.

“AI technologies are expanding rampantly, essentially unchecked and unregulated,” Blanchett said in a statement. “In order for humans to remain in front of these technologies, consent must be the first consideration.”

The launch comes less than a year after the Really Simple Licensing standard released version 1.0 of its open protocol that lets publishers define machine-readable terms for AI training on their content. RSL Media builds on that same architecture, extending the principle of machine-readable rights from content licensing to the protection of human creative expression, identity, and likeness.

“The right to decide whether AI can use your work or identity should not be reserved for only those who can afford lawyers or have platforms big enough to be heard,” said Nikki Hexum, co-founder and CEO of RSL Media. “It is a basic human right.”

The organization covers four distinct rights areas: creative works (songs, films, books, art, photography), identity (name, image, voice, movement, personal attributes), characters (fictional figures including their names, voices, and visual depictions), and marks (logos, trademarks, trade dress, brand identifiers). Its co-founders include not only Blanchett and Hexum but also Doug Leeds and Eckart Walther, the latter being the RSS co-creator behind the original RSL standard.

The legal framework was co-authored by James Everingham, former head of engineering at Instagram and CEO of Guild.ai; Jacqueline Sabec, a partner at King, Holmes, Paterno & Soriano; and Francesca Amfitheatrof, former artistic director of watches and jewelry at Louis Vuitton and design director at Tiffany & Company.

A free, public registry launches in June. Once live, anyone will be able to verify their identity through RSLMedia.org, declare permissions for their work and likeness, and have those preferences translated into machine-readable signals that AI platforms can query before use.

The approach mirrors the logic behind IAB Europe’s compensation framework (and the earlier RSL protocol) in aiming to turn consent into infrastructure. RSL Media’s registry goes further, however, by applying that model to individuals rather than publishers, covering identity and likeness alongside creative work.

The post Cate Blanchett Backs New AI Rights Nonprofit appeared first on The Media Copilot.

A new coalition of more than 500 Hollywood professionals launched Monday to push back against unregulated AI adoption in the entertainment industry. The Creators Coalition on AI brings together Oscar winners, A-list talent, and below-the-line workers to establish shared standards for AI use in creative industries.

The group announced four core demands: transparency and compensation for content used in AI training, job protection plans, guardrails against deepfakes and misuse, and safeguards for human creativity in the production process.

“This is not a full rejection of AI,” the coalition wrote in its launch statement, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “We believe humanity is creative enough to design a system that allows for the tech and creative industries to coordinate, collaborate and flourish.”

Founding members include Daniel Kwan and Jonathan Wang of Everything Everywhere All at Once, actors Natasha Lyonne and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and former Academy president Janet Yang. More than 500 signatories joined, including Cate Blanchett, Aaron Sorkin, Rian Johnson, and Kristen Stewart.

The timing matters. The coalition accelerated its launch after Disney announced a $1 billion investment in OpenAI last week, a deal that blindsided many in the industry. “We weren’t planning to announce this soon,” Kwan told THR. “But when we saw the vacuum of leadership in our industry, we felt the need to step up.”

The group held meetings with representatives from the Writers Guild, Producers Guild, Directors Guild, SAG-AFTRA, and Teamsters in November to discuss alignment on AI principles. “Everybody seemed to be much more strongly in agreement than we even anticipated,” Yang said.

Why it matters for newsrooms: The coalition offers a model for cross-guild coordination that media organizations could replicate. Its emphasis on transparency, consent, and compensation for training data directly addresses concerns facing news publishers as AI companies scrape their content without permission or payment.

The post Hollywood creators launch coalition to set AI industry standards appeared first on The Media Copilot.