https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/09/ietf_ai_preferences_working_group/
The Internet Engineering Task Force has chartered a group it hopes will create a standard that lets content creators tell AI developers whether it’s OK to use their work. Named the AI Preferences Working Group (AIPREF), the group has been asked develop two things:
A common vocabulary to express authors' and publishers' preferences regarding use of their content for AI training and related tasks;
Means of attaching that vocabulary to content on the Internet, either by embedding it in the content or by formats similar to robots.txt, and a standard mechanism to reconcile multiple expressions of preferences.
The AIPREF charter suggests “attaching preferences to content either by including preferences in content metadata or by signaling preferences using the protocol that delivers content” as the ways to get this done. AIPREF co-chair Mark Nottingham thinks those items are needed because current systems aren’t working. He thinks the “non-standard signals” in robots.txt files – an IETF standard that defines syntax on whether crawlers are allowed to access web content – aren’t working. …
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