Now getting ready for the AI era, nonprofit Creative Commons led the licensing movement that permits artists to share their creations while maintaining copyright. The group announced the introduction of a new initiative on Wednesday called CC signals, which would let dataset owners specify whether or not their material can be utilized by machines for training AI models.
The goal is to strike a balance between the open nature of the internet and the constant need for additional data to support artificial intelligence.
In a blog post, Creative Commons highlights how the ongoing data extraction process may undermine online transparency and lead to organizations securing their websites with paywalls or walling them off rather than giving access to their data.
On the other side, the CC Signals project seeks to offer a technological and legal solution that would offer a framework for dataset sharing intended for use by both those who hold the data and those who use it to train artificial intelligence.
The need for such a tool is growing as businesses struggle to modify their terms of service and policies to either restrict AI training on their data or disclose the extent to which they will use user data for AI-related reasons.
For example, after first allowing third parties to use its public data to train their algorithms, X later undid that modification. Reddit is preventing bots from scraping its data for AI training by using its robots.txt file, which is designed to inform automatic web crawlers whether they may access the site. A solution that would charge AI bots for scraping and tools for confounding them is what Cloudflare is aiming for. Additionally, open source developers have created tools to waste the resources and slow down AI crawlers that disregard their “no crawl” instructions.
Similar to the CC licenses that already cover billions of openly licensed creative works online, the CC Signals project offers an alternative option in the form of a collection of tools that give a variety of legal enforcement while also carrying an ethical weight.
In a statement, Creative Commons CEO Anna Tumadóttir stated, “CC signals are designed to sustain the commons in the age of AI.” “We think CC signals will help shape an open AI ecosystem based on reciprocity, just as CC licenses helped build the open web.”
Only now is the project starting to take shape. The GitHub page and the CC website both feature early designs. In anticipation of its November 2025 alpha launch (early test), the group is aggressively soliciting public input. A number of town halls for comments and inquiries will also be held there.