If you’ve been following along on the blog this year, you’ll know that we’ve been thinking a lot about the future of open, particularly in this age of AI. With our 2025-2028 strategy to guide us, we’ve been louder about a renewed call for reciprocity to defend and protect the commons as well as the importance of openness in AI and open licensing to avoid an enclosure of the commons. 

Last month, we took some of these conversations on the road and hosted the Open House for an Open Future during SXSW in Austin, TX, as part of a weekend-long Wiki Haus event with our friends at the Wikimedia Foundation. 

During the event, we spoke with Audrey Tang and Cory Doctorow about the future of open, especially as we look towards CC’s 25th anniversary in 2026.  In this wide-ranging conversation, a number of themes were reflected that capture both where we’ve been over the last 25 years and where we should be focusing for the next 25 years, including: 

• The Fight for Technological Self-Determination: Contractual restrictions are increasingly being used to lock down essential technologies, from printer ink to hospital ventilators. The push for openness and economic fairness must go beyond just content-sharing and extend to fighting for the rights of people to repair, modify, and use technology freely.
  
• Shifting from Resistance to Building Alternatives: The open movement is not just about opposing corporate restrictions but also about creating viable, open alternatives. Initiatives like Gov Zero show that fostering decentralized, user-controlled platforms can help counteract monopolistic digital ecosystems.
  
• The Power of Exit as a Lever for Change: Simply having the option to leave restrictive platforms can influence corporate behavior. Efforts like Free Our Feeds and Bluesky aim to create credible exit strategies that prevent users from being locked into exploitative digital environments.
  
• Beyond Copyright: New Frameworks for Openness and Innovation: While Creative Commons began as a response to copyright limitations, the next phase should focus on broader issues like supporting an infrastructure for open sharing, ethical AI development, and open governance models that empower communities rather than just limiting corporate control.
  
• Reclaiming the Ethos of Open Source and Free Software: The movement must reconnect with its ethical roots, focusing on freedom to create, share, and innovate—not just openness for the sake of efficiency. This includes resisting corporate capture of “openness” and ensuring technological advances serve public interest rather than private profit.

Since the proliferation of mainstream AI, we’ve been analyzing the limitations of copyright (and, by extension, the CC licenses since they are built atop copyright law) as the right lens to think about guardrails for AI training. This means we need new tools and approaches in this age of AI that complement open licensing, while also advancing the AI ecosystem toward the public interest. Preference signals are based on the idea that creators and dataset holders should be active participants in deciding how and/or if their content is used for AI training. Our friends at Bluesky, for example, have recently put forth a proposal on User Intents for Data Reuse, which is well worth a read to conceptualize how a preference signals approach could be considered on a social media platform. We’ve also been actively participating in the IETF’s AI Preferences Working Group, since submitting a position paper on the subject mid-2024 .

As CC gets closer to launching a protocol based on prosocial preference signals—a simple pact between those stewarding the data and those reusing it for generative AI training—we had the opportunity during SXSW to chat with some great thought leaders about this very topic. Our panelists were Aubra Anthony, Senior Fellow, Technology and International Affairs Program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Zachary J. McDowell, Phd, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, University of Illinois at Chicago; Lane Becker, President, Wikimedia LLC at Wikimedia Foundation, and our very own Anna Tumadóttir, CEO, Creative Commons to explore sharing in the age of AI.  A few key takeaways from this conversation included: 

• Balancing Norms and Legal Frameworks: There is a growing interest in developing normative approaches and civil structures that go beyond traditional legal frameworks to ensure equitable use and transparency.
  
• Navigating AI Traffic and Commercial Use: Wikimedia is adapting to the influx of AI-driven bot traffic and exploring how to differentiate between commercial and non-commercial use. The idea of treating commercial traffic differently and finding ways to fundraise off bot traffic is becoming more prominent, raising important questions about sustainability in an open knowledge ecosystem. From CC’s perspective, we’ve found that as our open infrastructures mature they become increasingly taken for granted, a notion that is not conducive to a sustainable open ecosystem.
  
• Openness in the Age of AI: There is growing reticence around openness, with creators becoming more cautious about sharing content due to the rise of generative AI (note, this is exactly what our preference signals framework is meant to address, so stay tuned!). We should emphasize the need for open initiatives to adapt to the broader social and economic context, balancing openness with creators’ concerns about protection and sustainability.
  
• Making Participation Easy and Understandable: To encourage widespread participation in open knowledge systems and for preference signal adoption, tools will need to be simple and intuitive. Whether through collective benefit models or platform cooperativism, ease of use and clarity are essential to engaging the broader public in contributing to open initiatives.

Did you know that many social justice and public good organizations are unable to participate in influential and culture-making events like SXSW due to a lack of funding? CC is a nonprofit organization and all of our activities must be cost-recovery. We’d like to sincerely thank our event sponsor, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for making this event and these conversations possible. If you would like to contribute to our work, consider joining the Open Infrastructure Circle which will help to fund a framework that makes reciprocity actionable when shared knowledge is used to train generative AI.

The post CC @ SXSW: Protecting the Commons in the Age of AI appeared first on Creative Commons.

On February 10 and 11, 2025, the government of France convened the AI Action Summit, bringing together heads of state, tech leaders, and civil society to discuss global collaboration and action on AI. The event was co-chaired by French President Macron and Indian Prime Minister Modi. This was the third such Summit in just over a year, the first two in the UK and South Korea respectively. The next one is to be hosted in India, with a firm date not yet set.

Creative Commons was invited to be an official participant in the Summit, and given room to speak on a panel about international AI governance. Given our continued advocacy for public interest AI, and on-the-ground work, particularly in the US and EU, to interrogate new governance structures for data sharing, open infrastructures, and data commons, the Summit was an important venue to contribute to the global conversation.

We focused on three things in our panel and direct conversations:

1. Civil society matters, and must continue to be included. While we may not hold the pen on drafting declarations, or be in the negotiating room with world leaders and their ample security teams, we must continue to (loudly) bring our perspectives to these spaces. If we aren’t there, then nobody is. Without civil society, there can be no public interest. 
2. The importance of openness in AI. What it means, who benefits from it, and how we think critically about ongoing (dis)incentives to participate in the open knowledge ecosystem.
3. Local solutions for local contexts, local content, and local needs.

Civil Society Matters

Civil society matters because we represent real concerns from real people. A people-centered approach to AI must inevitably be a planet-centered approach as well, one simply cannot and should not exist without the other.

Included in the civil society contingent at the Summit were also major philanthropic foundations who have long focused on public interest technology. Encouragingly (we hope) they have joined forces with private investment and governments to launch Current AI, a coalition which is advocating ‘global collaboration and local action, building a future where open, trustworthy technology serves the public interest’. The Summit also saw the launch of ROOST (Robust Open Online Safety Tools), which was born out of a conversation at a prior Summit around the absence of reliable, robust, high-quality open source tooling for trust and safety. ROOST adds a critical building block to the open source AI ecosystem as tools to allow anyone to run safety checks on datasets before use and training should (hopefully) result in safer model performance.

But philanthropy is not a business model for something that is set to become ubiquitous public infrastructure at a greater level than is already the case with the internet currently. The investments of philanthropy alone will not be enough to steer the public interest conversation to the top of the action agenda. There must be matching political will and public investment, and we’ll be watching closely for evidence that actions are following words.

Our view is that governments should prioritize investment in publicly accessible AI, which meets open standards and allows for equitable access. These are key drivers of innovation and every sector stands to benefit. Governments can lead the way on investing in compute, (re)training people, and preparing and encouraging high quality openly licensed datasets, to level the playing field for researchers, innovators, open source developers, and beyond.

Openness in AI

Openness in AI continues to be a broad and multifaceted topic: how do we continue to foster open sharing, making it resilient, safe and trustworthy while we’re hearing from our community some examples of creators and organizations choosing more restrictive licenses now, or hesitating to share at all in an attempt to regain agency over how their content is used as training data. Our future depends on protecting the progress of the last 20 years of open practices. The answer does not lie in a misguided shift from CC BY to CC BY-NC-ND. We have to think more holistically.

The CC licenses alone are not a governance framework in and of themselves, but what they represent are absolutely critical components of legal and social norms that support data governance that can serve the public interest.

In the context of data governance, we see our role in helping negotiate preferences for reuse of datasets containing openly licensed works. We need to ensure that folks are still incentivized to participate and contribute to the commons, while feeling their voices are heard and their work is contributing in mutually-beneficial ways. If you are the steward of a large open dataset, we want to hear from you.

Local Solutions for Local Contexts

From CC’s perspective, local solutions for local contexts are where we need to put our energy. As Janet Haven from Data & Society frames it, let’s focus on collaboration for AI governance, rather than striving for a single, global governance structure. One size does not fit all, and even issues that are global needs, like planetary survival, will require very different efforts by country or region. It was rather encouraging to hear examples of “small” language models from across the world, that emphasize language preservation and cultural context. Efforts to record, catalog, and digitize language and cultural artifacts are underway. This is yet another area where we see a need to systematically articulate and clearly signal preferences for reuse, so that local efforts thrive and are respected appropriately.

Where We Go From Here

We heard from many fellow civil society organizations that the tone in France differed markedly from previous Summits in the UK or South Korea. There was a welcome diversity of civil society voices on panels and in workshops, with a steady drumbeat of calls for safe, sustainable, and trustworthy AI. “Open source” and “public interest” were phrases uttered in many major interventions. But aside from us collectively being able to fill a few volumes on how we define these terms anyway (sustainable for who?) the real impact of the Summit will be seen in the ways in which we collaborate from now on.

The political discussions at the Summit focused heavily on the false dichotomy of regulation versus innovation – and yes, the language used heavily fed into the narrative that those are mutually exclusive. Much emphasis on the desire for regional investment (and superiority), while offering global collaboration, was mildly disheartening but also fully expected. Political statements around public interest were repeated but vague. Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, who emphatically urged everyone to not forget the people, stating that “the benefits must accrue to everyone”. Whether those in power will pay attention to that message is anyone’s guess. Take, for example, The Paris Charter on Artificial Intelligence in the Public Interest, which says all of the right things but lacks in terms of both widespread endorsement and meaningful steps towards implementation.

We are clear-eyed on the fact that AI is here, has been for quite some time, and will not go away. We need collaborative, pragmatic approaches to steer towards what we see as beneficial outcomes and public interest values. While there were glimmers of hope from some who hold legislative and executive power, it’s clear that civil society has a lot of advocacy work ahead of us.

The Summit culminated in countries signing onto a declaration, with notable omissions from the United States and UK. As always, it is once the media cycle moves on where we will see any lasting impact. In the meantime, let’s not wait for another global Summit to take action.

The post The AI Action Summit & Civil Society’s (Possible) Impact appeared first on Creative Commons.

The meeting was organized by Creative Commons, Open Knowledge Foundation, Open Future, and Wikimedia Europe in collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation. The goal of the meeting was to create links between different advocacy efforts so that a shared advocacy strategy for the Knowledge Commons can be created.

One of the calls that jumped out for us was a call for defining new open principles – principles that could clarify what openness means in the context of today’s digital space and ensure its pro-public, democratic potential. Formulating such principles could help against several challenges, e.g. open washing.

Another clear call is the one confirming the assumptions behind the Common(s) Cause project: it is the call for a shared advocacy agenda, which could help ensure that Knowledge Commons are treated and sustained as critical digital infrastructures.

The event welcomed over 55 participants from 20 countries, most of whom traveled to Katowice to attend the Wikimania conference. The majority of attendees were from open advocacy communities. The event not only enabled the organizers to build stronger working ties with one another, but with the many other organizations who were represented at the event.

The participants acknowledged that the power of the open movement is only as strong as the bonds of the people working to advance an open, equitable agenda, and collective impact can only be achieved through individuals from different organizations working closely together.

The report identifies a few common causes that can be found at the intersection of open movement organizations’ strategies, the socio-technological zeitgeist, and current policy opportunities, such as:

1. (Re)defining openness in a new technological era.
2. Creation of a shared advocacy strategy and enhanced regional and thematic cooperation across the organizations.
3. Developing and testing governance approaches for our digital commons.
4. Advancing openness and sustainability for the technology, data, content, and governance of Digital Public Infrastructure.

This report is a starting point and serves as an invitation to the wider open community to join these causes as well as to formulate their own, which could then be backed by other organizations. The next step in this process will be disseminating its findings, hopefully resulting in further backing and refinement of the causes and additional feedback from the wider community, which this small convening could not fully represent.

Read the full report. 

The post Open Movement’s Common(s) Causes appeared first on Creative Commons.

At the intersection of rapid advancements in generative AI and our ongoing strategy refresh, we’ve been deeply engaged in researching, analyzing, and fostering conversations about AI and value alignment. Our goal is to ensure that our legal and technical infrastructure remains robust and suitable in this rapidly evolving landscape.

In these uncertain times, one thing is clear: there is an urgent need to develop new, nuanced approaches to digital sharing. This is Creative Commons’ speciality and we’re ready to take on this challenge by exploring a possible intervention in the AI space: preference signals. 

Understanding Preference Signals

We’ve previously discussed preference signals, but let’s revisit this concept. Preference signals would empower creators to indicate the terms by which their work can or cannot be used for AI training. Preference signals would represent a range of creator preferences, all rooted in the shared values that inspired the Creative Commons (CC) licenses. At the moment, preference signals are not meant to be  legally enforceable. Instead, they aim to define a new vocabulary and establish new norms for sharing and reuse in the world of generative AI.

For instance, a preference signal might be “Don’t train,” “Train, but disclose that you trained on my content,” or even “Train, only if using renewable energy sources.”

Why Do We Need New Tools for Expressing Creator Preferences?

Empowering creators to be able to signal how they wish their content to be used to train generative AI models is crucial for several reasons:

• The use of openly available content within generative AI models may not necessarily be consistent with creators’ intention in openly sharing, especially when that sharing took place before the public launch and proliferation of generative AI. 
• With generative AI, unanticipated uses of creator content are happening at scale, by a handful of powerful commercial players concentrated in a very small part of the world.
• Copyright is likely not the right framework for defining the rules of this newly formed ecosystem. As the CC licenses exist within the framework of copyright, they are also not the correct tools to prevent or limit uses of content to train generative AI. We also believe that a binary opt-in or opt-out system of contributing content to AI models is not nuanced enough to represent the spectrum of choice a creator may wish to exercise.  

We’re in the research phase of exploring what a system of preference signals could look like and over the next several months, we’ll be hosting more roundtables and workshops to discuss and get feedback from a range of stakeholders. In June, we took a big step forward by organizing our most focused and dedicated conversation about preference signals in New York City, hosted by the Engelberg Center at NYU.

Six Highlights from Our NYC Workshop on Preference Signals

• Creative Commons as a Movement

Creative Commons is a global movement, making us uniquely positioned to tackle what sharing means in the context of generative AI. We understand the importance of stewarding the commons and the balance between human creation and public sharing. 

• Defining a New Social Contract

Designing tools for sharing in an AI-driven era involves collectively defining a new social contract for the digital commons. This process is essential for maintaining a healthy and collaborative community. Just as the CC licenses gave options for creators beyond no rights reserved and all rights reserved, preference signals have the potential to define a spectrum of sharing preferences in the context of AI that goes beyond the binary options of opt-in or opt-out. 

• Communicating Values and Consent

Should preference signals communicate individual values and principles such as equity and fairness? Adding content to the commons with a CC license is an act of communicating values;  should preference signals do the same? Workshop participants emphasized the need for mechanisms that support informed consent by both the creator and user.

• Supporting Creators and Strengthening the Commons

The most obvious and prevalent use case for preference signals is to limit use of content within generative AI models to protect artists and creators. There is also the paradox that users may want to benefit from more relaxed creator preferences than they are willing to grant to other users when it comes to their content. We believe that preference signals that meet the sector-specific needs of creators and users, as well as social and community-driven norms that continue to strengthen the commons, are not mutually exclusive. 

• Tagging AI-Generated vs. Human-Created Content

While tags for AI-generated content are becoming common, what about tags for human-created content? The general goal of preference signals should be to foster the commons and encourage more human creativity and sharing.  For many, discussions about AI are inherently discussions about labor issues and a risk of exploitation. At this time, the law has no concept of “lovingly human”,  since humanness has been taken for granted until now. Is “lovingly human” the new “non-commercial”? Generative AI models also force us to consider what it means to be a creator, especially as most digital creative tools will soon be driven by AI. Is there a specific set of activities that need to be protected in the process of creating and sharing? How do we address human and generative AI collaboration inputs and outputs? 

• Prioritizing AI for the Public Good

We must ensure that AI benefits everyone. Increased public investment and participatory governance of AI are vital. Large commercial entities should provide a public benefit in exchange for using creator content for training purposes. We cannot rely on commercial players to set forth industry norms that influence the future of the open commons. 

Next Steps

Moving forward, our success will depend on expanded and representative community consultations. Over the coming months, we will:

• Continue to convene our community members globally to gather input in this rapidly developing area;
• Continue to consult with legal and technical experts to consider feasible approaches;
• Actively engage with the interconnected initiatives of other civil society organizations whose priorities are aligned with ours;
• Define the use cases for which a preference signals framework would be most effective;
• Prototype openly and transparently, seeking feedback and input along the way to shape what the framework could look like;
• Build and strengthen the partnerships best suited to help us carry this work forward.

These high-level steps are just the beginning. Our hope is to be piloting a framework within the next year. Watch this space as we explore and share more details and plans. We’re grateful to Morrison Foerster for providing support for the workshop in New York.

Join us by supporting this ongoing work

You have the power to make a difference in a way that suits you best. By donating to CC, you are not only helping us continue our vital work, but you also benefit from tax-deductible contributions. Making your gift is simple – just click here. Thank you for your support.

The post Six Insights on Preference Signals for AI Training appeared first on Creative Commons.

This December, Creative Commons led a CC Certificate Bootcamp, or condensed Certificate training, for faculty and staff from 16 different California Community Colleges implementing Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) degree programs. This marked the second CC Bootcamp for California Community Colleges after the California legislature invested $115 million to expand ZTC degrees and the use of open educational resources (OER) within the statewide California community college system. ZTC degrees and increased use of OER reduce the overall cost of education and shorten the time to degree completion for students. With the average cost of course textbooks estimated at $100/student/course, ZTC degrees are crucial for students’ higher education. Further, students’ grades achieved in ZTC programs are higher than in traditional courses.

The CC Certificate program provides training and tools for ZTC program faculty and staff to legally and effectively implement the open licensing requirements of California’s historic investment in education. After learning about copyright basics, fair use, the public domain, and CC licensing, participants brainstormed and initiated some great ways to support ZTC program faculty and student needs. Examples of participant work include using generative AI to create “Creative Commons Bots,” tools to help others learn about licensing, and test their own knowledge with quiz questions; creating a grants guide for OER funding; drafting a potential strategic plan for OER/ ZTC work (work in progress), and remixing previous courses or resources to address ZTC communications and learning needs for localized audiences (works in progress). See what participants are saying below.

“This is one of the best professional development experiences I’ve had in years”

“Thank you so much for sharing wonderful resources and CC practices. I will share this knowledge with my colleagues”

“You’ve nailed the condensed week workshop. So much fun, and creating work groups was really beneficial”

We are proud to support California Community Colleges’ collaboration as they strengthen their foundations for open education. CC is grateful to the Michelson 20MM Foundation for generously funding this bootcamp at San Bernardino Valley College. Special thanks also go to the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges for their liaison work, expertise and support, to San Bernardino Valley College for hosting the event, and to Fresno Pacific University for providing professional development credits to faculty.

If you’re interested in advancing open education efforts in your own institution, Creative Commons offers an array of learning, training, and consulting opportunities to support our global community in developing open licensing expertise and a deeper understanding of recommended practices for better sharing. Visit the CC Training & Consulting page to learn more about our training services, workshops, lectures, and CC Certificate courses. Register for our next CC Certificate online courses, starting 29 January.

The post More California Community Colleges Get CC Certified! appeared first on Creative Commons.

We want to share a message regarding some learnings obtained after the 2023 Creative Commons Global Summit and meeting with our Mexican organizing committee and members of the local community.

Financial decisions related to the CC Summit were made by the CC team and not by the local Mexican Chapter. Specifically the cost of entry to the event, which proved to be high in relation to the contextual conditions of Mexico. Due to difficult fundraising conditions for many nonprofits in 2023, the CC team decided to keep the entrance fee higher, offer discounted rates, and scholarships for attendees. We wish to learn from this experience for future events, as it is clear that if we want to continue our value of global inclusion, it is necessary to create a new formula to eliminate access barriers for those who wish to attend our events.

Initially, the estimated cost for simultaneous translation provided to us was above our budget. For this reason, we hired SyncWords to provide live subtitles, human and automatic translations for each of the sessions and panels in the main auditorium. The translations could be accessed through the QR code that we had published in various places (this code provided access to a SyncWords page that displayed the subtitles and the translation). We also offered translation (English/Spanish) according to the needs of our attendees, with bilingual people available in each room and in the auditorium. However, as we began the event we recommended that it was imperative to have simultaneous audio translation to encourage dialogue and follow our value of global inclusion. We especially thank the Tlatolli Ollin Professional Interpretation and Translation Services cooperative, which won the challenge by providing excellent service in a short time.

No one in our Mexican Chapter should be held responsible for any decision, nor should their reputation be tarnished by decisions made during the Summit. After such big events, there are always lessons to be learned and one of them is how CC, as a small global non-profit, which has to raise funds every year to survive, can better support our local chapters that provide so much wisdom and experience.

I want to personally thank everyone involved in the CC Summit and we will continue to work to create a world where knowledge and creativity are accessible to everyone.

Sincerely,
Catherine

Español

Queremos compartir un mensaje referente a algunos aprendizajes obtenidos después de la Cumbre Global Creative Commons 2023 y de reunirnos con nuestro comité organizador mexicano y miembros de la comunidad local.

Las decisiones financieras relacionadas con la Cumbre CC fueron tomadas por el equipo de CC y no por el Capítulo Mexicano local. Específicamente el costo de la entrada al evento, el cual se consideró alto en relación a las condiciones contextuales de México. Debido a las difíciles condiciones de recaudación de fondos para muchas organizaciones sin fines de lucro en 2023, el equipo de CC decidió mantener la tarifa de entrada más alta, ofrecer tarifas con descuento, y becas para los asistentes. Deseamos aprender de esta experiencia para eventos futuros, ya que está claro que si queremos seguir nuestro valor de inclusión global, es necesario crear una nueva fórmula para eliminar barreras de acceso para aquellos que deseen asistir a nuestros eventos.

Inicialmente, el costo estimado para traducción simultánea se nos proporcionó por encima de nuestro presupuesto. Por tal motivo contratamos a SyncWords para realizar subtítulos, traducciones humanas y automáticas en vivo para cada una de las sesiones y paneles en el auditorio principal. Se podía acceder a las traducciones a través del código QR que habíamos publicado en varios lugares (dicho código proveía acceso a una página de SyncWords que mostraba los subtítulos y la traducción). También ofrecimos traducción (inglés/español) según las necesidades de nuestros asistentes, con personas bilingües disponibles en cada sala y en el auditorio. Sin embargo, al comenzar el evento decidimos que era imperativo contar con traducción de audio simultánea para fomentar el diálogo y seguir nuestro valor de inclusión global. Agradecemos especialmente a la cooperativa Tlatolli Ollin Servicios Profesionales de Interpretación y Traducción que aceptó el desafío brindando un excelente servicio en poco tiempo.

Nadie en nuestro Capítulo Mexicano debe ser responsabilizado por ninguna decisión, ni su reputación debe verse empañada por las decisiones tomadas durante la Cumbre. Después de eventos tan grandes, siempre hay lecciones que aprender y una de ellas es cómo CC, como una pequeña organización global sin fines de lucro, que tiene que recaudar fondos cada año para sobrevivir, puede apoyar mejor a nuestros capítulos locales que brindan tanta riqueza, sabiduría y experiencia.

Quiero agradecer personalmente a todos los involucrados en la Cumbre CC y continuaremos trabajando para crear un mundo donde el conocimiento y la creatividad sean accesibles para todos.

Atentamente,
Catherine

The post CC Global Summit 2023: Reflections appeared first on Creative Commons.

On the eve of the CC Global Summit, members of the CC global community and Creative Commons held a one-day workshop to discuss issues related to AI, creators, and the commons. The community attending the Summit has a long history of hosting these intimate discussions before the Summit begins on critical and timely issues.

Emerging from that deep discussion and in subsequent conversation during the three days of the Summit, this group identified a set of common issues and values, which are captured in the statement below. These ideas are shared here for further community discussion and to help CC and the global community navigate uncharted waters in the face of generative AI and its impact on the commons.

Background considerations

1. Recognizing that around the globe the legal status of using copyright protected works for training generative AI systems raises many questions and that there is currently only a limited number of jurisdictions with relatively clear and actionable legal frameworks for such uses. We see the need for establishing a number of principles that address the position of creators, the people building and using machine learning (ML) systems, and the commons, under this emerging technological paradigm.
2. Noting that there are calls from organized rightholders to address the issues posed by the use of copyrighted works for training generative AI models, including based on the principles of credit, consent, and compensation.
3. Noting that the development and deployment of generative AI models can be capital intensive, and thus risks resembling (or exacerbating) the concentration of markets, technology, and power in the hands of a small number of powerful for-profit entities largely concentrated in the United States and China, and that currently most of the (speculative) value accrues to these companies.
4. Further noting that, while the ability for everyone to build on the global information commons has many benefits, the extraction of value from the commons may also reinforce existing power imbalances and in fact can structurally resemble prior examples of colonialist accumulation.
   1. Noting that this issue is especially urgent when it comes to the use of traditional knowledge materials as training data for AI models.
   2. Noting that the development of generative AI reproduces patterns of the colonial era, with the countries of the Global South being consumers of Northern algorithms and data providers.
5. Recognizing that some societal impacts and risks resulting from the emergence of generative AI technologies need to be addressed through public regulation other than copyright, or through other means, such as the development of technical standards and norms. Private rightsholder concerns are just one of a number of societal concerns that have arisen in response to the emergence of AI.
6. Noting that the development of generative AI models offers new opportunities for creators, researchers, educators, and other practitioners working in the public interest, as well as providing benefits to a wide range of activities across other sectors of society. Further noting that generative AI models are a tool that enables new ways of creation, and that history has shown that new technological capacities will inevitably be incorporated into artistic creation and information production.

Principles

We have formulated the following seven principles for regulating generative AI models in order to protect the interests of creators, people building on the commons (including through AI), and society’s interests in the sustainability of the commons:

1. It is important that people continue to have the ability to study and analyse existing works in order to create new ones. The law should continue to leave room for people to do so, including through the use of machines, while addressing societal concerns arising from the emergence of generative AI.
2. All parties should work together to define ways for creators and rightsholders to express their preferences regarding AI training for their copyrighted works. In the context of an enforceable right, the ability to opt out from such uses must be considered the legislative ceiling, as opt-in and consent-based approaches would lock away large swaths of the commons due to the excessive length and scope of copyright protection, as well as the fact that most works are not actively managed in any way.
3. In addition, all parties must also work together to address implications for other rights and interests (e.g. data protection, use of a person’s likeness or identity). This would likely involve interventions through frameworks other than copyright.
4. Special attention must be paid to the use of traditional knowledge materials for training AI systems including ways for community stewards to provide or revoke authorisation.
5. Any legal regime must ensure that the use of copyright protected works for training generative AI systems for noncommercial public interest purposes, including scientific research and education, are allowed.
6. Ensure that generative AI results in broadly shared economic prosperity – the benefits derived by developers of AI models from access to the commons and copyrighted works should be broadly shared among all contributors to the commons.
7. To counterbalance the current concentration of resources in the the hands of a small number of companies these measures need to be flanked by public investment into public computational infrastructures that serve the needs of public interest users of this technology on a global scale. In addition there also needs to be public investment into training data sets that respect the principles outlined above and are stewarded as commons.

In keeping with CC’s practice to provide major communications related to the 2023 Global Summit held in Mexico City in English and Spanish, following is the text of this post originally created in English translated to Spanish

Hacer que la IA funcione para los creadores y los bienes comunes

En vísperas de la Cumbre Global CC, los miembros de la comunidad global CC y Creative Commons celebraron un taller de un día para discutir cuestiones relacionadas con la IA, los creadores y los bienes comunes. La comunidad que asiste a la Cumbre tiene una larga historia de albergar estas discusiones íntimas antes de que comience la Cumbre sobre temas críticos y oportunos.

Como resultado de esa profunda discusión y de la conversación posterior durante los tres días de la Cumbre, este grupo identificó un conjunto de cuestiones y valores comunes, que se recogen en la siguiente declaración. Estas ideas se comparten aquí para una mayor discusión comunitaria y para ayudar a CC y a la comunidad global a navegar por aguas inexploradas frente a la IA generativa y su impacto en los bienes comunes.

Consideraciones preliminares

1. Reconociendo que en todo el mundo el estatus legal del uso de obras protegidas por derechos de autor para entrenar sistemas generativos de IA plantea muchas preguntas y que actualmente solo hay un número limitado de jurisdicciones con marcos legales relativamente claros y viables para tales usos. Vemos la necesidad de establecer una serie de principios que aborden la posición de los creadores, las personas que construyen y utilizan sistemas de aprendizaje automático y los bienes comunes, bajo este paradigma tecnológico emergente.
2. Señalando que hay llamados de titulares de derechos organizados para abordar los problemas que plantea el uso de obras protegidas por derechos de autor para entrenar modelos de IA generativa, incluso basados en los principios de crédito, consentimiento y compensación.
3. Observando que el desarrollo y despliegue de modelos generativos de IA puede requerir mucho capital y, por lo tanto, corre el riesgo de asemejarse (o exacerbar) la concentración de mercados, tecnología y poder en manos de un pequeño número de poderosas entidades con fines de lucro concentradas en gran medida en los Estados Unidos y China, y que actualmente la mayor parte del valor (especulativo) corresponde a estas empresas.
4. Señalando además que, si bien la capacidad de todos para aprovechar los bienes comunes globales de información tiene muchos beneficios, la extracción de valor de los bienes comunes también puede reforzar los desequilibrios de poder existentes y, de hecho, puede parecerse estructuralmente a ejemplos anteriores de acumulación colonialista.
   1. Señalando que esta cuestión es especialmente urgente cuando se trata del uso de materiales de conocimientos tradicionales como datos de entrenamiento para modelos de IA.
   2. Señalando que el desarrollo de la IA generativa reproduce patrones de la era colonial, siendo los países del Sur Global consumidores de algoritmos y proveedores de datos del Norte.
5. Reconocer que algunos impactos y riesgos sociales resultantes del surgimiento de tecnologías de IA generativa deben abordarse mediante regulaciones públicas distintas de los derechos de autor, o por otros medios, como el desarrollo de estándares y normas técnicas. Las preocupaciones de los titulares de derechos privados son sólo una de una serie de preocupaciones sociales que han aparecido en respuesta al surgimiento de la IA.
6. Señalando que el desarrollo de modelos generativos de IA ofrece nuevas oportunidades para creadores, investigadores, educadores y otros profesionales que trabajan en el interés público, además de brindar beneficios a una amplia gama de actividades en otros sectores de la sociedad. Señalando además que los modelos generativos de IA son una herramienta que permite nuevas formas de creación, y que la historia ha demostrado que inevitablemente se incorporarán nuevas capacidades tecnológicas a la creación artística y la producción de información.

Principios

Hemos formulado los siguientes siete principios para regular los modelos de IA generativa con el fin de proteger los intereses de los creadores, las personas que construyen sobre los bienes comunes (incluso a través de la IA) y los intereses de la sociedad en la sostenibilidad de los bienes comunes:

1. Es importante que la gente siga teniendo la capacidad de estudiar y analizar obras existentes para crear otras nuevas. La ley debería seguir dejando espacio para que las personas lo hagan, incluso mediante el uso de máquinas, al tiempo que aborda las preocupaciones sociales que aparecen por el surgimiento de la IA generativa.
2. Todas las partes deberían trabajar juntas para definir formas para que las personas creadoras y quienes son titulares de derechos expresen sus preferencias con respecto a la capacitación en IA para sus obras protegidas por derechos de autor. En el contexto de un derecho exigible, la capacidad de hacer un “opt out” de tales usos debe considerarse el límite legislativo, ya que los enfoques basados en la aceptación voluntaria y el consentimiento bloquearían grandes sectores de los bienes comunes debido a la duración y el alcance excesivos de la protección de los derechos de autor, así como el hecho de que la mayoría de las obras no están siendo activamente gestionadas.
3. Además, todas las partes también deben trabajar juntas para abordar las implicaciones para otros derechos e intereses (por ejemplo, protección de datos, uso de la imagen o identidad de una persona). Esto probablemente implicaría intervenciones a través de marcos distintos del derecho de autor.
4. Se debe prestar especial atención al uso de materiales del conocimiento tradicional para entrenar sistemas de IA, incluidas formas para que los custodios de las comunidades proporcionen o revoquen la autorización.
5. Cualquier régimen legal debe garantizar que se permita el uso de obras protegidas por derechos de autor para entrenar sistemas generativos de IA con fines no comerciales de interés público, incluidas la investigación científica y la educación.
6. Garantizar que la IA generativa dé como resultado una prosperidad económica ampliamente compartida: los beneficios que obtienen los desarrolladores de modelos de IA del acceso a los bienes comunes y a las obras protegidas por derechos de autor deben compartirse ampliamente entre quienes contribuyen a los bienes comunes.
7. Para contrarrestar la actual concentración de recursos en manos de un pequeño número de empresas, estas medidas deben ir acompañadas de inversión pública en infraestructuras computacionales públicas que satisfagan las necesidades de los usuarios de interés público de esta tecnología a escala global. Además, también es necesario invertir públicamente en sets de datos de entrenamiento que respeten los principios descritos anteriormente y se administren como bienes comunes.

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We have an incredible group of people lined up to be keynote speakers at the 2023 CC Global Summit, to be held 3–6 October in Mexico City. In our first announcements, we welcomed writer Anya Kamenetz and Māori media leader Peter-Lucas Jones. We are deeply honored to announce that the Summit’s opening keynote will be from Francisco J. Rivas Mesa, also known by his stage name Tito Rivas. Francisco is a sound artist, musician, researcher, cultural leader, and General Director of Mexico’s National Sound Archive, who will speak on global culture from the deeply rooted perspective of Mexico and Latin America.

Francisco J. Rivas Mesa has a degree in Audiovisual Communication from the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana and in Philosophy from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). He is a candidate for a Doctorate in Musical Technologies from the Faculty of Music of UNAM. He has a Diploma in Executive Training for Cultural and Museum Leaders (ILM, Universidad Iberoamericana). His work has focused on experimentation with sound, visual and performative media as a creator, researcher and cultural manager. He has also been interested in strategies to produce social and ethical access to archives and their reuse for educational and cultural purposes. He has been a professor of subjects on sound and audiovisual creation in academic institutions and as a creator and curator his work has been presented and exhibited in various national and international venues and festivals. He has also published specialized articles on sound phenomenology and the archeology of listening. He is a member of the Sound and Listening Studies Network (RESEmx) and the Scientific Committee of the Mexico Acoustic Ecology Network (REAmx). He was part of the team that inaugurated Mexico’s National Sound Archive in 2008 as head of the Sound Research and Experimentation department and as Deputy Director of Sound Promotion and Dissemination. He was curator of the Espacio Sonoro de Casa del Lago (UNAM) and director of the Ex Teresa Arte Actual museum of INBAL. He is currently general director of the National Sound Archive of Mexico and president of the Ibermemoria Sonora, Photographic and Audiovisual Program.

Like Francisco, all our keynoters connect directly with CC’s areas of focus, from contemporary creativity and cultural heritage, to media, science, education, and journalism. With the Summit’s theme of AI and the commons, we also expect to be challenged with new and reborn perspectives that we should consider in thinking about artificial intelligence and its intersection with open knowledge and culture. All the Summit keynotes will honor both the Summit’s location in Mexico, and the CC community’s global scope.

We invite you to join us at the Summit in Mexico City to hear Francisco and many other diverse voices speak. Our hope is that the keynote addresses, the full Summit program, and our informal connections in Mexico City and online will combine to enable us all to cultivate CC’s strategy of better sharing, sharing that is contextual, inclusive, just, equitable, reciprocal, and sustainable.

Register for the CC Global Summit >

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Tenemos un grupo increíble de personas preparadas para ser oradores principales en la Cumbre Global 2023, que se llevará a cabo del 3 al 6 de octubre en la Ciudad de México. En nuestros primeros anuncios, dimos la bienvenida a la escritora Anya Kamenetz y al líder de medios Māori Peter-Lucas Jones. Ahora nos sentimos profundamente honrados de anunciar que el discurso de apertura de la Cumbre estará a cargo de Francisco J. Rivas Mesa, también conocido por su nombre artístico Tito Rivas. Francisco es artista sonoro, músico, investigador, gestor cultural, y director general de la Fonoteca Nacional de México, quien hablará sobre la cultura global desde la perspectiva profundamente arraigada de México y América Latina.

Francisco J. Rivas Mesa es licenciado en Comunicación Audiovisual por la Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana y en Filosofía por la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (U.N.A.M). Candidato a Doctor en Tecnologías Musicales por la Facultad de Música de la U.N.A.M. Cuenta con un Diploma en Formación Ejecutiva para Líderes Culturales y de Museos (ILM, Universidad Iberoamericana). Su trabajo se ha enfocado en la experimentación con medios sonoros, visuales y performáticos como creador, investigador y gestor cultural, asimismo se ha interesado en las estrategias para producir acceso social y ético de los archivos y su reaprovechamiento con fines educativos y culturales. Ha sido profesor de asignaturas sobre creación sonora y audiovisual en instituciones académicas y como creador y curador se ha presentado y expuesto su trabajo en diversos recintos y festivales nacionales e internacionales. También ha publicado artículos especializados sobre fenomenología del sonido y arqueología de la escucha. Es miembro de la Red de Estudios sobre el Sonido y la Escucha (RESEmx) y del Comité Científico de la Red Ecología Acústica México (REAmx). Formó parte del equipo que inauguró en 2008 la Fonoteca Nacional como jefe del departamento de Investigación y Experimentación Sonora y como Subdirector de Promoción y Difusión del Sonido. Fue curador del Espacio Sonoro de Casa del Lago (UNAM) y director del museo Ex Teresa Arte Actual del INBAL. Actualmente es director general de la Fonoteca Nacional de México y presidente del Programa Ibermemoria Sonora, Fotográfica y Audiovisual.

Al igual que Francisco, todos nuestros oradores principales se conectan directamente con las áreas de enfoque de CC, desde la creatividad contemporánea y el patrimonio cultural hasta los medios, la ciencia, la educación y el periodismo. Con el tema de la Cumbre sobre la IA y los bienes comunes, también esperamos enfrentar el desafío de perspectivas nuevas y renacidas que deberíamos considerar al pensar en la inteligencia artificial y su intersección con el conocimiento y la cultura abiertos. Todas los oradores principales de la Cumbre honrarán tanto la ubicación de la Cumbre en México como el alcance global de la comunidad CC.

¡Estén atentos para conocer a nuestros otros oradores principales! Te invitamos a unirte a nosotros en la Cumbre en la Ciudad de México para escuchar hablar a Francisco y muchas otras voces diversas. Nuestra esperanza es que los oradores principales, el programa completo de la Cumbre y nuestras conexiones informales en la Ciudad de México y en línea se combinen para permitirnos a todos cultivar la estrategia de CC de compartir mejor, un compartir que sea contextual, inclusivo, justo, equitativo, recíproco y sostenible.

Regístrese para la Cumbre Global CC >

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The CC Global Summit is now just one week away! As we make the final preparations for this first opportunity to gather in person at a Summit in several years, we are excited to unveil the program that will take place 3–6 October in Mexico City. Since 2006, the CC Global Summit has brought together thousands of CC community members, activists, creators, advocates, librarians, educators, lawyers, and technologists from around the world to discuss, collaborate, and take action to make our global culture more open and collaborative.

We must begin by honoring the very special Summit venue, the Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco, next to the Plaza de las Tres Culturas. As we gather to collaborate on the future of the open commons, we will be surrounded by rich culture from Mexico’s history. Bringing these cultural themes together is “We Are the Commons,” the illustration commissioned specially for the Summit by Mexican artist Eréndira Derbez.

You can now explore the 100s of panels, community sessions, workshops, and networking opportunities scheduled in the program, all of which connect to the Summit’s main theme, AI & the commons, and/or one of the general topics on which the CC community often collaborates: better internet, contemporary creativity, culture & heritage, education, journalism, and scholarship & science.

We are especially honored to welcome the Summit’s three keynote speakers, who have been invited to challenge us with new and reborn perspectives about open knowledge and culture, and to honor both the Summit’s location in Mexico and our community’s global scope.

• Marina Núñez Bespalova, Mexico’s Undersecretary of Cultural Development, who will open the Summit speaking on global culture from the deeply rooted perspective of Mexico and Latin America.
• Peter-Lucas Jones, whose keynote on day two draws from his work as a leading figure in Māori media and his collaborations to honor local and traditional knowledge and culture in a global context.
• Anya Kamenetz, who will close the Summit with a keynote that grows out of her work as a journalist, writer, and now, activist focused on climate education for children.

Register now for the CC Global Summit in Mexico City >

Virtual participation

If you can’t make it to Mexico City, there are several opportunities to engage with the Summit virtually. First, take a moment to register for free virtual access to make sure you get all the information about how you can participate in the Summit at a distance and at different times, including:

• the sessions that will be livestreamed
• the pre-recorded video sessions you can watch on demand
• the informal connection sessions CC is organizing with Virtually Connecting
• the opportunity to connect with participants in Mexico and around the world in the CC community slack
• and the opportunity to meet Summit presenters and participants in virtual gatherings after the Summit in Mexico is over

Register now for virtual Summit participation >

Thanks to all those who made the Summit possible

Bringing hundreds of people together for a rich program in a world capital like Mexico City is a challenge CC could not have undertaken without a lot of support from many sources.

We are deeply grateful to the team at CC Mexico — especially Irene Soria, Iván Martínez, and the team of volunteers they brought together — for their dedicated assistance large and small to make the Summit happen in their city.

We also thank the volunteers around the world who gave their time and energy on the Summit program and scholarship committees. The overwhelming interest in this year’s Summit generated big challenges for these people who stepped up to help shape a Summit that we hope is diverse, enriching, and practical. Another heartfelt thank you goes out to our friends at Wikimedia Mexico who are sponsoring a group of volunteers to help out during the event. We are grateful for this partnership and looking forward to meeting everyone next week!

Beyond all the essential community effort powering the Summit, we especially thank the sponsors who contributed financial support to make it possible to offer the scholarships that enable people from all over the world to attend the Summit and to ensure this ambitious gathering will be rewarding and successful.

CC Global Summit 2023 Sponsors: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Microsoft Corporation, Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web, Akin, Anthropic, Mozilla Foundation, The Michelson 20MM Foundation, MHz Curationist, Frontiers Media, Arnold & Porter, Crowell, Centro Cultural de España.

Logos used by permission from sponsoring organizations.

Are you interested in sponsoring CC Global Summit 2023? Please contact us at development@creativecommons.org.

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