Creative Commons launches AI-enabled 'CC Signals,' a framework that lets content owners specify in detail how their content can and cannot be reused for AI training



Creative Commons, an international non-profit organization that provides the Creative Commons License (CC License), which allows authors to express their intention to 'use my work freely as long as these conditions are met,' has announced a new framework for the AI era, ' CC Signals .' Creative Commons describes CC Signals as 'a major step toward building a more fair and sustainable AI ecosystem based on shared interests.'

Introducing CC Signals: A New Social Contract for the Age of AI - Creative Commons
https://creativecommons.org/2025/06/25/introducing-cc-signals-a-new-social-contract-for-the-age-of-ai/



CC Signals will enable content managers who manage large amounts of content to present AI developers with a set of criteria to be met. These criteria are based on various aspects of interactions and will be able to prompt meaningful and practical actions. Content managers will be able to express their preferences for how their content should be reused.

CC Signals is both a technical and legal tool and a social proposition, 'a new agreement between those who share data and those who use it to train AI models,' Creative Commons explains.

CC Signals will be built to be easily understood by machines and humans. However, because CC Signals are rooted in the power of the collective, Creative Commons explains that their enforcement may be legally binding or prescriptive, and their scope of application may vary. But their application will always carry the ethical weight of 'we give, we receive, and we give again, and we are all in this together.'



'CC Signals is designed to preserve Creative Commons in the age of AI,' said Creative Commons CEO Anna Tumadottir. 'Just as CC licenses helped build the open web, we believe CC Signals will help create an open AI ecosystem based on reciprocity.'

'If we want a future where knowledge remains open, we need to work together to insist on new forms of give and take,' said Sarah Hinchliffe Pearson, general counsel at Creative Commons. 'Single preferences, singular expressions, are irrelevant in this day and age. But together we can demand a different way of doing things.'

The draft of CC Signals is available on GitHub. Creative Commons is committed to developing CC Signals with partners and the community, and will actively solicit feedback and opinions from general users in preparation for the alpha release in November 2025.

GitHub - creativecommons/cc-signals: CC signals is a framework for a simple pact between those stewarding data, and those reusing it for AI development. CC signals provide a set of shared ground rules for an AI ecosystem that is mutually beneficial.
https://github.com/creativecommons/cc-signals



If you want to know more about the legal implications of CC Signals, check out the following reports:

From Human Content to Machine Data - Introducing CC Signals
(PDF file) https://creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Human-Content-to-Machine-Data_Final.pdf



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