AI can only exist thanks to the billions of works scraped from the internet. Worldwide, more than 100,000 visual creators have already collectively said “no” to the feeding of their works to AI via an “opt out”. Here you can see the ways in which this has been done by various organisations in multiple countries.
Take matters into your own hands! Fill in the opt out form on our website and join a community of 100.000+ visual creators. Support us in our efforts to push for an effective AI opt out.
Opt outs should be easy, accessible and quick, without complicated forms or procedures.
Opt outs should be enabled at a collective level. That is, there should be a central party, non-commercial and independent of the AI companies, that facilitates and manages the opt out. No need to research the full AI-field: you should be done after one single registration, applying to all AI-developers.
It should be possible for visual creators to exclude their entire oeuvre from use for AI, without having to provide catalogues of works. This general opt-out should apply to their works which are distributed all over the internet, often outside of their control. The robots.txt-protocol, which relies on control over specific web pages containing works, is not an effective opt-out solution.
Legal certainty on how to opt out is long overdue, as this possibility has been part of European copyright law since 2019. On this platform, we are trying to bring together all collective opt outs for visual creators that live up to our idea of what an opt out should look like. Furthermore, we offer individual visual creators the opportunity to join our Opt Out Now!-collective, by adding their name to our list of opted-out artists, which we have made machine-readable by adding a translation into ‘computer language’ via a so-called xml.file. See the FAQ for more information on the AI rights reservation.
Support an effective collective opt out!
More organizations have been working towards an effective collective opt out, adding up to 100.000+ visual creators opting-out in Europe. In this overview, we bring together the initiatives of various organizations to make clear that visual creators are opting out on a massive scale.
Authors' society Sabam decided, in the interest and on behalf of the authors, composers and publishers it represents, to exercise its reservation for text and data mining of its repertoire by AI tools.
read more
SOFAM opposes the use of visual artworks by systems of artificial intelligence (AI) within the framework of the exception for text and data mining (Article XI 190, 20° Code of Economic Law)
read more
ADAGP formally opposes the use of works in its repertoire by artificial intelligence (AI) systems within the framework of the data mining exception provided for in Article 4...
read more
G Bild-Kunst reserves the rights necessary to reproduce and/or otherwise use the works of authors represented by VG Bild-Kunst for training of any AI application and for any commercial TDM application...
read more
Pictoright expressly reserves the right, on behalf of the image makers from whom it exercises the relevant copyrights, to reproduce or otherwise use the copyright-protected works produced by these creators...
read more
The works of the authors included in the repertoire of VEGAP published on this website (www.vegap.es) may not be reproduced or communicated to the public, in whole or in part, without the prior authorisation...
read moreThis FAQ is mainly aimed at visual creators filling out the form for the Opt Out Now!-registry. If you have questions regarding the Overview or other questions that are not answered below, feel free to contact the Federatie Beeldrechten.
The rise of generative AI, artificial intelligence that can generate images, text, sound and other media at the touch of a button, is unstoppable. This technology has bright sides, but there are also concerns. Generative AI can only exist thanks to the billions of copyrighted works in the datasets on which these systems are trained. These datasets have been scraped off the internet in a fully automated manner. The creators of all those works have a hard time resisting this and, moreover, receive no compensation for this use. This stings.
The law says that creators can make use of a reservation of rights, a so-called opt out. That means that as a creator, you can prohibit the use of your work for AI training purposes. While it is good that this possibility exists, there is a lot that is unclear:
How to opt-out?
Is there a central database for opt-outs?
Can I opt-out by name or only by my work?
Can I opt-out my entire oeuvre at once?
What about an opt-out for work already used for AI?
How do I know that an opt-out actually works?
So many questions, but unfortunately, legally speaking, there are no set answers yet. And that's a problem, because AI systems are getting bigger and more intelligent every day. Out of necessity, Opt Out Now! is jumping into this gap.
Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee this (yet). Firstly, we do not know whether (all) AI companies respect a rights reservation. There is still little transparency in this area. Moreover, there is still limited guidance from the legislator on what such a rights reservation should look like. Besides proposing the, for visual creators untenable, standard of robots.txt, the discussions around the EU Code of Practice have not led to any real usable rights reservation options or standard requirements. The opt-out may therefore be subject to additional requirements, for example in terms of machine-readability (a requirement under the law in the online context) and the information to be provided. The Federatie Beeldrechten believes that with Opt Out Now! a good and valid standard has been created. We will keep you informed of developments in this area after registration.
There are plenty of initiatives that allow you to opt-out. They are however subject to the same (legal) uncertainties. Nevertheless, we encourage creators to use these in addition to their opt-out via Opt Out Now! You can find a list and explanation of the options currently known here and here (in Dutch).
With Opt Out Now! we are taking action. Besides setting a new standard for AI rights reservation, we also want to bring together other collective opt-out initiatives in the visual sector and make a statement for policymakers and AI companies with the creators supporting Opt Out Now! It is important to get this issue on the political agenda and give visual creators a clear voice in this debate. They need to regain control over their work. For the other goals of the Federatie Beeldrechten on AI, please refer to the file on the Federatie Beeldrechten website, where you can also find an overview of what all member organisations currently offer in terms of information on AI.
If you add up all the creators on behalf of whom a collective opt-out has been made by one of the parties we have listed on this page, you quickly arrive at more than 100,000 rights holders. Not all of them have registered via our opt-out form. This is mainly because the opt-out form has primarily been circulated among Dutch (language) visual creators. Meanwhile, AI training also uses work from creators from all over the world, and many rights holders are represented by their collective management organisation. Take them all together and we can confidently say that there are 100,000+ collectively managed opt-outs in Europe.
Opt Out Now! is currently there only for visual artists. At a later stage, we will explore whether creators from other disciplines can also join.
For using the opt-out possibility, it seems important that your opt-out is traceable to the creator and the oeuvre in some way. So it is best to indicate as clearly as possible in your opt-out the name under which the copyrighted work was published, and which is difficult to confuse with another creator. This can be an alias or just your first name and surname. Are you not the creator yourself, but the rights holder because you are an heir, for example? Then it is good to note down the name of the original creator, based on which the work can be traced. Arerights vested in a private limited company (B.V.) or Foundation? Then it is a good idea, if the work is published under both names, to state both, for example by putting the name of the company or stichting in brackets after the name.
We think it’s time you had a simple and quick way to prohibit the use of your work for AI. With Opt Out Now! we present a new standard.
Opt Out Now! is an initiative by the Federatie Beeldrechten, a collaboration between collective management organisation Pictoright, professional associations and unions of designers, illustrators, photographers, photojournalists and visual artists. Within the Federatie, they work together to improve the position of visual creators where it concerns copyright.
