Article by Stefaan Verhulst: “Last week, Creative Commons — the global nonprofit best known for its open copyright licenses — released “CC Signals: A New Social Contract for the Age of AI.” This framework seeks to offer creators a means to signal their preferences for how their works are used in machine learning, including training Artificial Intelligence systems. It marks an important step toward integrating re-use preferences and shared benefits directly into the AI development lifecycle….
From a responsible AI perspective, the CC Signals framework is an important development. It demonstrates how soft governance mechanisms — declarations, usage expressions, and social signaling — can supplement or even fill gaps left by inconsistent global copyright regimes in the context of AI. At the same time, this initiative provides an interesting point of comparison with our ongoing work to develop a Social License for Data Reuse. A social license for data reuse is a participatory governance framework that allows communities to collectively define, signal and enforce the conditions under which data about them can be reused — including training AI. Unlike traditional consent-based mechanisms, which focus on individual permissions at the point of collection, a social license introduces a community-centered, continuous process of engagement — ensuring that data practices align with shared values, ethical norms, and contextual realities. It provides a complementary layer to legal compliance, emphasizing trust, legitimacy, and accountability in data governance.
While both frameworks are designed to signal preferences and expectations for data or content reuse, they differ meaningfully in scope, method, and theory of change.
Below, we offer a comparative analysis of the two frameworks — highlighting how each approaches the challenge of embedding legitimacy and trust into AI and data ecosystems…(More)”.
