The European Commission consultation is open until 23 January 2026.
The IPTC has submitted a response to the “Stakeholder’s consultation and call for expression of interest aimed at supporting the implementation of the Measure 1.3 of the General-Purpose AI Code of Practice’s Copyright Section“.

The survey describes various technologies which could be used by content owners and rights holders to express opt-in or opt-out information regarding whether rights holders allow AI engines to train on media content. It asked our thoughts on how widely they have been adopted and how suitable they would be to be adopted as a mechanism for expressing machine-readable opt-out preferences.

This is the first step in a multi-stage process, which will culminate in the publication by the European Commission of the final list of generally agreed TDM opt-out protocols.

We feel that the IPTC is well-suited to participate in this work for several reasons:

  • IPTC has created one such mechanism (the Data Mining property of the IPTC Photo Metadata Standard, created in conjunction with the PLUS Coalition)
  • IPTC has been involved in the creation of other technologies in this area as such the W3C Community’s Text and Data Mining Reservation Protocol (TDMRep), C2PA, and the IETF’s work in the AIPrefs Working Group
  • IPTC has published a guidance document for publishers on best practices for implementing AI opt-out technologies

We look forward to continuing work with the European Commission, and others, on this subject.