RSS Co-founder launches new AI data licensing agreement

The AI ​​industry faces increasing legal pressure after Anthropic reached a $1.5 billion copyright settlement, involving unauthorized training data, with more than 40 lawsuits currently unclosed. To this end, major web publishers including Reddit, Yahoo and Quora have launched the “Real Simple License” (RSL), an agreement that allows machines to read the license terms through the robots.txt file. The system is backed by a collective licensing organization similar to the American Society of Composers, Writers and Writers (ASCAP), and aims to simplify the royalty payment and negotiation process. While there are challenges in tracking data usage in AI models, RSL’s co-founder believes that existing proof-of-transaction reports are feasible. The key question is whether AI companies will adopt the system despite their historical reliance on free network data.