A new open standard aims to give publishers control over how artificial intelligence companies use their content. Really Simple Licensing 1.0 allows websites to set machine-readable licensing and compensation rules for AI systems.
The RSL Collective developed the standard with backing from major internet companies. More than 1,500 organizations now support it, including The Associated Press, Vox Media, Stack Overflow, and The Guardian. Infrastructure providers Cloudflare, Akamai, and Fastly have also endorsed the standard.
RSL builds on the existing robots.txt protocol, which controls web crawler access. The new standard adds categories like “ai-all,” “ai-input,” and “ai-index” to give publishers detailed control. A key feature lets publishers allow their content in traditional search results while blocking AI-powered search features.
“RSL provides exactly that missing layer,” RSL Collective cofounders Doug Leeds and Eckart Walther told The Verge. Publishers can now stay in traditional search while opting out of AI training or AI-generated answers.
The standard includes a “contribution” option developed with Creative Commons. This allows nonprofit creators to request monetary or in-kind contributions from AI systems that use their work.
The RSL standard alone cannot block AI scrapers that ignore licensing rules. However, infrastructure providers supporting the standard can enforce these restrictions at the network level. Google currently faces a European Commission investigation over using publisher content in AI features without offering opt-out options for AI while maintaining traditional search presence.
Sources: RSL Press Release, The Verge
