Last week we talked about some asinine comments made by the filmmakers behind the movie featuring an AI Val Kilmer. The pro-AI comments were made to Vanity Fair, in an article that included some counterpoints from a woman named Nikki Hexum. After playing whack-a-mole against AI using and abusing the work of her artist clients, Hexum set out to establish a central online location where humans can explicitly label the degree to which they do or do not consent to their name, likeness, or creative work being used by AI. To make this happen, Hexum cofounded the nonprofit RSL Media alongside Doug Leeds, Eckart Walther, and Cate Blanchett, and last week Blanchett presented the fruits of their labor before the European Parliament in Brussels: a free, online tool where humans can register their level of consent in relation to AI called the Human Consent Registry.

The context is disarmingly simple: your face, your voice, your name, treated as property you get to license or withhold. … “Your identity is your IP in the age of AI, and every person deserves the right to decide how AI can or cannot use it,” Blanchett said.

The registry, hosted at rslmedia.org, works something like a traffic light. A user can allow AI to use their name, image, voice, likeness and movement, allow it subject to terms, or prohibit it outright.

Registration is free for individuals acting on their own behalf, and the system also accommodates third parties such as agents, guilds and managers who route requests through an approved pathway.

RSL Media said the registry should eventually extend to creative works, characters and brands.

[Bulgarian MEP Eva] Maydell described it as “a tool that makes rights transparent, scales trust, and keeps human creativity at the centre of technological progress.”

The choice of venue carried its own argument: the Parliament is where the EU AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive AI law, was shaped and adopted.

The registry is the latest move in a campaign Blanchett has been waging for over a year. In March 2025, she joined Paul McCartney, Ben Stiller and more than 400 artists in an open letter to the Trump administration, urging it not to roll back copyright protection.

That letter took direct aim at proposals from OpenAI and Google arguing that US copyright law should let AI companies train on copyrighted work without permission or payment, a fight that has only sharpened since.

RSL Media’s own launch in May drew support from a long roster of Hollywood names, among them Javier Bardem, Viola Davis, Tom Hanks, Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep. “AI technologies are expanding rampantly, essentially unchecked and unregulated,” Blanchett said in a statement at the time.

“In order for humans to remain in front of these technologies, consent must be the first consideration.”

…What the registry cannot yet do is compel anyone to honour it. Its premise is that a clear, machine-readable record of who has consented to what will give AI developers something they currently lack: a single place to check. If the companies choose to look is the next question.

[From The Next Web]

Whoever came up with the traffic light idea deserves a big bonus, because it makes the concept clear immediately. Green means the usage is allowed, yellow is allowed with conditions, and red is completely prohibited. I also love that the landing page for RSL Media (where the registry lives) welcomes you with the words “Protect Human Creativity.” And in that vein, Hexum has declared that protecting your own name/likeness/work is a basic human right. Hear hear! I think this tool is a fantastic way to address the issue of consent, and having all that data recorded in the same registry will prove incredibly valuable. The spectre at the feast, though, is that last paragraph of the article — the fact that nothing is compelling AI companies to check this registry… yet. I can assure you that no, companies will not choose on their own to check it. Not unless and until they are legally required to do so. RSL Media got the tech part up and running, the next step is making verification of consent ironclad law. The green light is ours, let’s go.

Embed from Getty Images

Photos credit: Olivier Huitel/Avalon, Estelle Carlier/Starface Photo/Cover Images