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.

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We’re proud to announce Creative Commons’ Legal Tools have been reviewed and accepted into the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) DPG Registry. The DPGA is a multi-stakeholder initiative, endorsed by the United Nations Secretary-General, that is working to accelerate the attainment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in low- and middle-income countries. DPGA does this by facilitating the discovery, development, use of, and investment in digital public goods (DPGs) in order to create a more equitable world.

Being recognized as a DPG increases the visibility, support for, and prominence of open projects that have the potential to tackle global challenges. To become a digital public good, all projects are required to meet the DPG Standard to ensure that projects truly encapsulate open source principles. 

Creative Commons provides and stewards the CC licenses and public domain tools that give every person and organization in the world a free, simple, and standardized way to grant copyright permissions for creative and academic works. In addition, the licenses support proper attribution and enable others to copy, distribute, and make use of those works. CC legal tools are digital public infrastructure that make the legal sharing of DPGs possible. 

At Creative Commons, we are thrilled to have our Legal Tools recognised as DPGs as they can empower people to dramatically improve access to open content. By advocating for the use and implementation of DPGs, global communities can work together in prioritizing and mobilizing resources to help solve global challenges. CC’s legal tools and our programs play a critical role in helping to advance the DPG ecosystem.

For any inquiries about CC’s involvement in the Digital Public Goods Alliance, please reach out to Cable Green. For more information on the Digital Public Goods Alliance please reach out to hello@digitalpublicgoods.net.

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.

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CC Licenses make it possible to share content legally and openly. Over the past 20 years, they have unlocked approximately 3 billion articles, books, research, artwork, and music. They’re a global standard and power open sharing on popular platforms like Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, Medium, Vimeo, and Khan Academy.

CC’s Legal Tools are a free and reliable public good. Yet most people are unaware that their infrastructure and stewardship takes a lot of money and work to maintain. 

We need to secure immediate and long term funding for the CC licenses and CC0 public domain tool, which are key to building a healthy commons. We’re facing many challenges and threats to the commons–libraries are under attack, misinformation is rampant, and climate change threatens us all. CC is one of the few nonprofit, mission-driven organizations fighting to ensure we have a sound legal infrastructure backing open ecosystems, so that culture and knowledge are shared in order to foster understanding and find equitable solutions to our world’s most pressing challenges.

We need support from like-minded funders to champion sharing practices and tools that oppose the enclosure of the commons.

That’s why we’re launching the Open Infrastructure Circle (OIC) — an initiative to obtain annual or multi-year support from foundations, corporations, and individuals for Creative Commons’ core operations and license infrastructure.

With consistent funding, we can resolve “technical debts” (years of work we’ve had to put on hold due to underfunding!) and make the CC Licenses more user-friendly and accessible to our large, global community. The world has changed a lot since the CC Licenses were first created in 2002, and we want to ensure they stay relevant and easy to use going forward.

We are grateful to our early Open Infrastructure Circle supporters, including the William + Flora Hewlett Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Paul and Iris Brest.

Sign up to join OIC with a recurring gift! Or reach out to us for more information about OIC at development@creativecommons.org.

Thank you for considering joining the Open Infrastructure Circle and contributing to the legal infrastructure of the open web.

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Today, Creative Commons (CC) is excited to announce new programmatic support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) to help make openly licensed preprints the primary vehicle of scientific dissemination.

“We are delighted to have been awarded this new grant to help us leverage our expertise to make life sciences research more open and accessible,” said Catherine Stihler, CC CEO. “From open review to translation to AI and machine-learning applications, realizing the full potential of preprints is predicated on them being openly licensed.”

The eighteen-month grant will enable CC to collaborate with CZI on a project focused on significantly increasing use of the CC BY 4.0 license on preprints in the life sciences by working with funders, preprint servers, and other preprint stakeholders.

“Preprint servers have seen a marked increase in uploads across many scientific disciplines, particularly in the life sciences¹, spurred by recognition of the importance of timely, open access to research results during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Dario Taraborelli, Science Program Officer at CZI. “Preprints are not only a faster pathway to the dissemination of research results, they also enable the development of an entire scholarly communication ecosystem around them. We are excited to partner with CC to further develop and strengthen this ecosystem and bring together funders, institutions, preprint servers, and other stakeholders to promote openly licensed preprints.”

“We are so pleased to have our open access research work further supported by CZI,” said Cable Green, CC Director of Open Knowledge. “Opening preprints is essential to our strategy to support better sharing, which includes helping scientists open and share all the components of their research — without long publication timelines — to support access, text and data mining, reproducibility, and further inquiry.”

This work will complement activities already underway with CC and our partners in the Open Climate Campaign, a multi-year project to promote open access to research to accelerate progress towards solving the climate crisis and preserving global biodiversity, and our Open Climate Data Project, an initiative to help open large climate datasets.

1. See https://github.com/nicholasmfraser/covid19_preprints

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Creative Commons is turning 20! We are delighted to be celebrating this milestone with our global community, honoring our commitment as a nonprofit to creating a world where everyone has access to knowledge and creativity. 

As we considered CC’s goals for the next 20 years, we kept returning to a simple idea: 

Better Sharing for a Brighter Future

In the last two decades, we’ve helped shape the culture around sharing,  increasing access to valuable information, historic images, scientific articles, educational resources, cultural artifacts, and so much more. 

Now we’re looking forward to putting the tools to accessing, using, and resharing content in the hands of everyone, everywhere. We know that greater access to information means a stronger global community, more innovation, and increased capacity to solve the challenges the world faces today and in the years to come. 

To make this happen, CC has set an ambitious goal to raise $15 million. 

These funds will ensure we can continue to build accessible, equitable Open Infrastructure that truly responds to community needs and start new projects in Open GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) and Open Science.  

Alongside our community of creators, partners, and users, Creative Commons is grateful for the donors who power our work from all corners of the world. 

Whether it’s $1 or $1,000, your gift makes everything we do possible. We hope you’ll consider supporting our Better Sharing campaign.

We’ve come a long way since 2001. 

When Creative Commons first started, there was no Facebook or Twitter, and Wikipedia was only just getting off the ground. The internet was a newer landscape full of potential, while older institutions like libraries and museums offered a blueprint for how we might open up educational materials, journal articles and more to regular people. We were excited by the prospect of a world where everyone has access to knowledge and creativity and Creative Commons was an opening to start creating that. 

Thanks to supporters like you, since those early days, we’ve made a significant impact. Our licenses have been used to openly share nearly two billion works globally, from historic images to scientific data to cultural artifacts. Moreover, we’ve steadily built up a global movement of over 86 countries all united by a belief in the power of Open Access.

We still have so much work to do.

As we look toward the next 20 years, we are committed to building a world where everyone, everywhere has access to free and open knowledge. For us, this means doubling down on our efforts to develop clear license and legal tools that are easy to understand and available in many languages; ensure access for all to open information and materials, not only those with privilege; and empower easy to use platforms, where free content can be accessed by anyone regardless of skill level with technology. 

It also means we must expand existing efforts like Open GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums), building the tools necessary for these institutions to more openly share their collections, and launch new ventures in Open Science to remove unnecessary barriers to addressing key issues like COVID-19, future public health crises, and the Climate Emergency. 

Please join us in our pursuit of Better Sharing that serves the public interest and creates the world the internet promised, one where everyone has access to culture, science, and knowledge. 

20 years is a huge milestone, and all of us here at Creative Commons are committed to 20 more. 

Here are some ways you can support the Better Sharing campaign:  

Donate

• Make a donation on our 20th Anniversary page (consider becoming a monthly donor!) 
• Fundraise for us by creating your own campaign on our 20th Anniversary page  
• Would you prefer to send a check? See our Donor FAQ for other ways to make a donation. 

Share

• Share why you support the open movement or how CC has impacted your work on social media, with the hashtags #CCTurns20 and/or #BetterSharing and tagging @creativecommons
• Share our Creative Commons’ Open Minds podcast 

Stay Informed 

• Sign up for CC’s Monthly Newsletter
• Save the date for the 2021 CC Global Summit
• Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn

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