Article by Maximilian Henning: “…The tool Blanchett launched – called the “Human Consent Registry” – allows people to signal whether they give permission for AI companies to use their likeness, or whether they would prefer to be asked or paid first.
These preferences are then put into a machine-readable form that AI can, in theory, easily read. But crucially, the registry is meant to be voluntary, which means AI companies would have to agree to adhere to people’s preferences.
Blanchett acknowledged this key limitation on Tuesday.
“A registry will not solve all the problems overnight. But every standard starts somewhere,” she said.
She also pointed out that while the registry is voluntary for now, it could become “part of the practical infrastructure” to assist binding laws and rules later on. It could, for example, give regulators evidence to enforce consequences if consent is not respected, she said.
The right to your face
Under the EU’s AI Act, AI companies must respect a person’s request not to use their creative work for AI training. The Commission is currently leading talks between tech giants and copyright holders over adding technical mechanisms for this, though these talks are making little progress.
Still, Blanchett’s registry will soon also allow people to say whether AI can use their work, and it could conceivably become one such mechanism.
The situation is more complicated regarding people’s identities, which the registry also aims to protect. Denmark is moving towards giving its citizens a say over AI deepfakes, with Cyprus following suit. However, so far, these are national initiatives, not EU-wide.
And the issue is legally complicated, touching on existing rules on privacy or platform regulation, while copyright rules aim to protect artistic works rather than faces or voices.
EU aware of a problem
The European Commission has recently announced it is working on a law governing how people can licence their creative work to AI companies – and acknowledged that artists face tricky issues in this field.
“Performers face certain challenges in relation to AI-generated imitations of their personal characteristics and performances (‘impersonifications’), which raise complex questions going beyond copyright protection,” said a public consultation on the new legal initiative…(More)”.
