Hollywood powerhouses bring AI fight to Europe

Cate Blanchett brought Hollywood starpower to Brussels on Tuesday as she launched a free tool to give people the right to decide how their image can be used by AI firms.

Blanchett announced the Human Consent Registry was live at the European Parliament also attended by Hollywood directing heavyweight Steven Soderbergh.

The public tool available online will allow anyone to register how they want their identity (name, image, voice, likeness, movement and/or other personal attributes) to be used by artificial intelligence systems.

They will have three options: allowed, allowed with terms, or prohibited.

“Your identity is your IP (intellectual property) in the age of AI, and every person deserves the right to decide how AI can or cannot use it,” Blanchett said in a statement.

The registry has been launched by RSL Media, co-founded by Blanchett, a non-profit organisation focused on ensuring consent in AI use.

Blanchett has been a staunch proponent of protecting rights in the AI age.

She was among over 800 creatives including fellow actor Scarlett Johansson as well as director Guillermo Del Toro, who published an open letter accusing AI giants of “theft” in January this year.

Hosting Tuesday’s event was EU lawmaker Eva Maydell who hailed the new tool “that makes rights transparent, scales trust, and keeps human creativity at the centre of technological progress”.

The European Parliament has garnered international attention after the EU became the first in the world to regulate AI so comprehensively.

Maydell had been one of the key EU negotiators of the landmark AI Act.

Blanchett and Soderbergh weren’t the only Hollywood figures in town to talk AI.

Acclaimed American film-maker Darren Aronofsky told an audience of creatives at the EU parliament how his AI studio Primordial Soup was using the technology for storytelling.

Aronofsky felt that while the models often created “incredible” images, they lacked the “power of emotion and the power of our humanity”.

With that discovery, he said he realised “we need to figure out how to use this incredible technology” and “turn them into storytelling machines”.