Is This Hollywood’s First Practical Solution to Control AI?

Summary

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The Town with Matthew Belloni

Episode Title: Is This Hollywood’s First Practical Solution to Control AI?
Release Date: June 3, 2026
Host: Matthew Belloni
Guest: Nikki Hexum (Co-founder & CEO, RSL Media)

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Episode Overview

Matthew Belloni explores the urgent issue facing Hollywood: How can creators, artists, and public figures control the use of their name, image, and likeness (NIL) in the age of AI? With AI-generated and assisted films flourishing, especially after recent actions at Cannes and Amazon’s AI on the Lot event, the episode spotlights the launch of RSL Media—a nonprofit aiming to establish the first practical, machine-readable standard for human consent in creative works. Nikki Hexum, RSL’s co-founder and CEO, joins Belloni to discuss how the RSL Human Consent Standard could become the industry's answer—or at least its first line of defense—against unchecked exploitation by AI models.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Acceleration of AI in Hollywood

• [00:00–03:39]
  • Recent explosion in AI-generated and AI-assisted filmmaking: Cannes market, Tribeca Film Festival, Amazon’s AI initiatives.
  • Underlying fear: AI models vacuum up creative work from the internet without consent or compensation.
  • Belloni frames the episode: “Protecting the names, images and likenesses of actors and other known people from AI exploitation is a separate and pretty urgent issue.”

2. Introducing RSL Media: The Consent Layer for AI

• [04:50–05:50]
  • Nikki Hexum: “We are not anti-AI; we are just very much pro-consent... We built an infrastructure layer that we felt was missing in the Internet to allow people to say what they were okay with and what they didn't want to happen.”
  • RSL Media aims to provide a public, free registry for creators to declare AI permissions (Yes/No/Sometimes) for their identity, works, and likeness.
  • Supported by cofounder Cate Blanchett, CAA, and high-profile clients (e.g., George Clooney, Viola Davis, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep).

3. The RSL Human Consent Standard: How It Works

• [06:14–09:13]
  • Designed for anyone with an online presence—managed via representatives, agencies, or unions.
  • Mechanism: A "stoplight system"—green for yes, yellow for conditional, red for no.
  • Example: “Kate’s voice is not to be trained or generated on. So it's a red light for her,” says Hexum of a hypothetical Cate Blanchett scenario.
  • Signals are machine-readable, allowing bots to “see and hopefully respect” permissions.

4. Database, Enforcement, and Scale Challenges

• [09:33–14:44]
  • Belloni asks why tech companies would comply.
  • Hexum: Serious companies want to avoid lawsuits and need regulatory certainty: “There’s a lot of large companies that really don't want the exposure of a $1.5 billion lawsuit.”
  • RSL is a standard, not an enforcer. The goal is to provide the “missing infrastructure layer” to facilitate legal compliance.
  • Scale is achieved by onboarding partners like agencies, unions, and organizations (ex: CAA's opt-out umbrella for all clients).

5. Adoption, Guilds, and Industry Collaboration

• [14:44–18:01]
  • RSL works with agencies and aims to partner with guilds (SAG-AFTRA, Writers Guild) to make the system easy for their workflows.
  • Hexum: “Hollywood often waits for a system to show up, then scrambles to adjust. Right now, you can actually participate in the system as it’s being built.”
  • Emphasis on cooperation—this is the “Napster/Spotify moment” for identity rights and AI.

6. Realities of Enforcement and Market Forces

• [20:55–23:02]
  • Belloni’s skepticism: Will big AI firms listen?
  • Hexum: “Every serious organization, every serious company, has rules and regulation and that typically allows you to, to make money. So for me, this opens markets, it removes exposure which is ridiculously large for some of these companies.” (21:56)
  • Laws and regulation (EU AI Act, Illinois AI Safety Bill) are coming—AI companies want a seat at the table to influence these.

7. Money, Business Models, and the Role of RSL

• [24:49–27:49]
  • RSL is not a monetization platform: “We are literally trying to be the most boring standard on the planet,” says Hexum (25:29).
  • No profit motive; RSL is a nonprofit “public benefit company.”
  • Others can build commercial applications (“app store for actors”) using the standard.
  • Quote: "Consent shouldn’t be paywalled. This is a layer of the Internet that just has to exist." (27:22)

8. Technical Limitations, Legal Rights, and Real-World Use

• [27:59–31:20]
  • RSL doesn’t create new rights or directly enforce anything—it makes existing rights more accessible for machines and audit-trails for law and regulation.
  • Legal enforcement will require contracts, existing laws, and further regulation.
  • Cate Blanchett’s inclusion doesn’t override existing contracts made with studios; it clarifies her current wishes and future uses.

9. Launch Timeline and Accessibility

• [30:41–31:20]
  • RSL Registry launches June 24, 2026.
  • Global rollout—accessible via website.
  • Major unveiling with European Parliament; individual creators or their representatives can create profiles and set permissions for identity and likeness.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|---------|-------| | 04:50 | Nikki Hexum | “We are not anti-AI; we are just very much pro-consent.” | | 07:28 | Nikki Hexum | “RSL media only is needed or works for people who have an online presence. Every movie Kate’s done is probably available online.” | | 08:01 | Nikki Hexum | “Her voice is used everywhere. What RSL does for someone like Kate is it says, 'I’m Cate Blanchett, and this is how I’m verifying who I am.'” | | 11:45 | Matt Belloni | “Do you have the legal firepower behind you to implement this rule and to get these companies in line?” | | 12:38 | Nikki Hexum | "Standards are really things that are existing in the world because they were adopted. And people are just saying, yeah, that's a good idea, we should use that." | | 18:01 | Nikki Hexum | “This is a really rare time in history where you actually can participate in the system that’s being built.” | | 21:56 | Nikki Hexum | “Every serious organization, every serious company, has rules and regulation and that typically allows you to, to make money. So for me, this opens markets, it removes exposure which is ridiculously large for some of these companies.” | | 25:29 | Nikki Hexum | “We are literally trying to be the most boring standard on the planet.” | | 27:22 | Nikki Hexum | “Consent shouldn’t be paywalled. This is a layer of the Internet that just has to exist in order for these markets to be open.” |

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:39] — Start of interview with Nikki Hexum
• [04:50] — Nikki explains RSL Media’s purpose
• [06:14] — Technical/infrastructure detail
• [07:28–08:37] — How RSL works for a celebrity profile
• [09:33] — Discussion: Will AI tech companies comply?
• [14:12] — Scaling via agency/guild partnerships
• [16:02] — Efforts to work with SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild
• [20:55] — Will the biggest AI labs just ignore this?
• [24:49] — Comparisons to the music/file-sharing era
• [25:29] — RSL’s nonprofit, open standard business model
• [27:59] — Technical and legal limitations of the consent system
• [30:41] — RSL registry launches June 24, 2026, global rollout

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Tone and Takeaways

Belloni is cautiously skeptical, frequently referencing the industry’s tendency to wait and see, and the self-interest of major players. Hexum is pragmatic and optimistic about the ability to set societal norms through open standards, emphasizing collaboration and the window of opportunity for artists, agencies, and guilds.

The message: Rights holders need to take charge—now is the moment to assert control, shape the standards, and prepare for a more regulated future as AI increasingly reshapes the business.

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For Creators & Industry: What Should You Do?

• Any public person, performer, artist, or rights holder should consider registering their consent preferences when the RSL registry opens on June 24.
• Guilds, unions, agencies, and organizations are encouraged to collaborate with RSL to create unified opt-in/opt-out structures.
• RSL provides infrastructure—actual enforcement will increasingly depend on new laws and contracts evolving to meet AI challenges.

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Notable Sidebar: Analogies & Industry Comparisons

• RSL’s standard likened to HTTP or RSS: invisible but essential internet infrastructure.
• Hexum compares the moment to “early Napster and Spotify days” for the music industry, implying the entertainment sector must set consent norms before platforms and business models cement around exploitative practices.

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End of Podcast Summary

Transcript

[Matt Bellamy]

Foreign. This episode of the Town is presented by HBO Max. For your awards consideration. HBO Max presents DTF St. Louis in this darkly comedic series, a love triangle between three adults experiencing middle aged malaise leads to one of them ending up dead. Don't miss the series TV guide is calling transcendent and audacious. DTF St. Louis is streaming on HBO Max. Watch now. This episode is brought to you by FX's love story, John F. Kennedy Jr. And Carolyn Bessette. The critically acclaimed series explores the undeniable chemistry, whirlwind courtship and high profile marriage of one of the most iconic couples of the 20th century, with Sarah Pigeon and Paul Anthony Kelly leading a cast including Naomi Watts, Constance Zimmer, Alessandro Navola and Grace Gummer. Called a stunning portrait of love by Variety, Love Story is Emmy eligible in all limited series categories. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney for bundle subscribers. It is Wednesday, June 3rd the March of artificial intelligence into Hollywood is really ramped up lately. AI generated films, or AI assisted films were all over the Cannes market Last month. Tribeca Film Festival just scheduled what's being called the first full length liveaction film generated by AI to be accepted at a major festival. And last week Amazon hosted a big AI filmmaking symposium called AI on the Lot where they greenlit three fully AI animated shows for prime video. That's just a few examples, but amid it all, there's still a really big fear around town that the models helping to create these films are just helping themselves do anything and everything they can find online. We discussed the legal framework for copyright protection in this context on a previous show. You can find that on the feed. But protecting the names, images and likenesses of actors and other known people from AI exploitation is a separate and pretty urgent issue. And to that end, an announcement last month caught my eye. It was for a nonprofit called RSL Media which is helping to provide consent frameworks for AI use in creative works, including name, image and likeness. The way it works is they use something called the RSL Human Consent Standard. This is a free public registry which is going to launch June 24th and allow anyone to declare their AI permissions. Yes no. Sometimes you will control what you want. After that, it turns that consent into a signal that machines can read. So if you're registered there, you can potentially get paid when your IP rights are used. Although this is just a registry, it's not an enforcement mechanism. It's an interesting concept and one of the co founders is Cate Blanchett. It's also got support from her agency caa, as well as other CAA clients like George Clooney, Viola Davis, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, many, many more. Blanchette. In announcing the initiative last month, she called it, quote, the industry's first practical solution where people everywhere, not just public figures, can assert control over how their work is used by AI. Okay, lots of questions there. Namely, how is this gonna work, practically speaking? And why would an AI company deal with a rights organization like this? So I asked Nikki Hexum, the co founder and CEO of RSL Media, to come on the show and explain today it's a new front in the battle to protect artists rights from AI and what you Hollywood person can do to safeguard your own image from the ringer and puck. I'm Matt Bellamy and this is,

[Nikki Hexum]

We

[Matt Bellamy]

are here with Nikki Hexum who is the co founder and CEO of RSL Media and hopefully a new force in the world of AI. Welcome, Nikki.

[Nikki Hexum]

Hi, thank you for having me.

[Matt Bellamy]

I wanted to have you on the show because I think it's interesting what you are doing amid this barrage of headlines that we are seeing. I feel like the push to AI has really ramped up in the. Even in the past couple weeks, just in the number of projects that were at can. You know, Amazon had this big event this past week called AI on the Lot where they basically brought in a bunch of filmmakers and journalists and executives and explained how they're going to start incorporating AI into their content output. Everywhere you look, there is some new AI initiative within the industry and you are among a, I would say small group of people that are pushing back on this or at least asking for a seat at the table. So could you just explain to me what RSL Media is and what you guys are trying to accomplish?

[Nikki Hexum]

Yeah. So RSL Media is the consent layer for the Internet or for AI Error. That gives all people, artists, rights holders, studios, basically anyone a way to say what they allow and what they don't allow for AI to use. How an AI system can use their identity. We have four main pillars that we cover. Identity marks, works and characters. And so we built this because this layer doesn't exist in the Internet right now. AI just kind of sucks in like a vacuum. Everything that it can see online and then generates and uses it to train models. And for us, we are not anti AI, we are just very much pro consent. And so we built an infrastructure layer that we felt was missing in the Internet to allow people to say what they were okay with and what they didn't want to Happen.

[Matt Bellamy]

So lots of questions and let's get to the infrastructure first. What does this entail? You're launching a new product in June. So like, what is this database? Who participates? Why should they participate? And then finally, we'll get to the question of what leverage you actually have to force or to invite AI companies to participate in this, but give us the infrastructure first.

[Nikki Hexum]

So right now, like I said, the bots pull in everything. There is no machine readable, shared language. Right. We have human language, we have human laws, we have contracts, we have databases that are proprietary and private. And all of this different rights, information is scattered in a billion different places. It's also very reliant on humans saying, hey, don't do that. Here's my contract saying not to, and us going back and forth. So building a system that allowed a machine to read that like this at Internet scale was. Or building an infrastructure to allow that was really necessary if we don't want to always be reactive. Right. We're always in this situation where we're playing whack a mole right now as humans against machines. And so how did we. How do you flip? That was really our mission. How do we say what needs to exist in order for that system to kind of not exist?

[Matt Bellamy]

Okay, so let's get into the details here. Let's use Cate Blanchett as an example. She's your co founder and a big advocate on this issue. What would you do with Cate Blanchett's 30, 40 year body of work here?

[Nikki Hexum]

Yeah. So basically RSL media only is needed or works for people who have an online presence. Right. Every movie Kate's done is probably available online. You can go to YouTube and see 100 different videos of her.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yes. The tar clips are everywhere. Yeah.

[Nikki Hexum]

Her voice is used everywhere. Right. And so what RSL does for someone like Kate is it says, I'm Kate Blanchett. This is how I'm verifying who I am through someone like Kate. It might be with an agency or a lawyer or a SAG AFTRA union.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah. Or her guild. I mean, we'll get to the guilds here.

[Nikki Hexum]

Yeah. And you know, we would verify that that was Kate. And then Kate would very easily. Or her representative, who she chose would very easily be able to say, Kate's voice is not to be trained or generated on. So it's a red light for her. We use a stoplight system. Green light is go, yellow light is yes with these terms, and then red light is no. So maybe Kate was a no and she was a red light. But Then she might have her image, might want to be okay. She might be okay with something being out there. Right.

[Matt Bellamy]

For a fee.

[Nikki Hexum]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Maybe she wants to get paid. Right. So whatever those terms are, and whoever she has delegated to set them for her and control them and receive compensation for them, would be in charge of that and making sure that for what? All of these different issues, her work, her likeness, identity, the way she moves, her style, she would be able to consent to them being used or not. Okay, so for Kate, she would say, no, I don't want my likeness used. I don't want my voice used, unless you're going to pay me, because this is my profession.

[Matt Bellamy]

Right.

[Nikki Hexum]

And this is hypothetical. I don't know actually what Kate would want. That is very much up to her.

[Matt Bellamy]

No, I get it, though. But so. So each individual would have a profile essentially, on your platform, and it would interact automatically with any bots that are scraping or looking for information to train on.

[Nikki Hexum]

Yeah. A tag that allows the bot to know immediately what it's supposed to do with that.

[Matt Bellamy]

But then that leads to the next question. Why in the world would any of these AI companies agree to this?

[Nikki Hexum]

Well, I think that right now there's a lot of companies that actually do want to do the right thing. There's also probably a bunch that don't. Right, okay. There's probably some that really do. There's a lot of large companies that really don't want the exposure of a $1.5 billion lawsuit. Right. Which is. I mean, these are happening all the time in different countries around the world as well. The EU AI act is, you know, 7% fine or something crazy. But for some of these companies, that's hundreds of millions of dollars.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah. Although, to be fair, there's no solid legal framework yet that is preventing companies from using copyrighted material to train models. That is still evolving.

[Nikki Hexum]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and this is part of that process. Right. This is what we've built is absolutely a part of that. Everything has to somewhere. It doesn't just magically appear.

[Matt Bellamy]

And so, and to be clear, that name, image and likeness rights are different from copyright and trademark, and it's a whole legal framework. But you are trying to encompass everything here.

[Nikki Hexum]

Yeah. I think when. I mean, for the music industry is a good example of this. They've had likeness in contracts for a really long time. It was so they could print your face on a T shirt and sell. Sell the shirts or put up promotional materials. That definition, I think, has changed and I think is still being defined Right now, what is a person's likeness? These are very abstract things that typically things like trademark does not deal in the abstract. Right. It is a very specific thing that you are trademarking. But I think the AI error has. An Internet speed has just changed how these things are working at all. And so we are now playing catch up to something that has moved much further ahead than the law has. You know, I mean, some people are still wrapping their heads around what this means. We don't have the law. It's kind of the Wild West. I mean, this is early Napster and Spotify days. Things are changing rapidly right now.

[Matt Bellamy]

Well, and that's my question is, do you have the legal firepower behind you to implement this rule and to get these companies in line?

[Nikki Hexum]

So I think what we're. I mean, this. We're building a standard. And by standard, a standard is a shared language. So HTTP is a standard. Nobody thinks about where that came from. It's totally taken for granted. I don't know what this podcast is running on, but RSS is a standard. Our team members built that. Standards are really things that kind of are existing in the world because they were adopted. And people are just saying, yeah, that's a good idea, we should use that. It's a step in the right direction. So. So our goal was to build a standard, something that was free, interoperable for everyone to use no matter where they were on the globe.

[Matt Bellamy]

So it's not an enforcement mechanism, it's merely the standard that the enforcers will use to get what they want.

[Nikki Hexum]

Yeah, I mean, serious companies need trust, they need legal certainty. They need enterprise customers, they need operational clarity. They're dealing right now with real lawsuits. Regulation is changing. Right. It's being drafted. There's a lot of customer pressure, there's public pressure. All of these things are starting points for a conversation. So being able to say we checked that, like the EU AI act, for instance, has a bunch of compliance things in it that say, you need to be able to check this. If you're an AI company, you need to show us that you check this. That system doesn't exist right now. Right. To show that you actually were trying to do the right thing. Doesn't exist. That's just a completely missing infrastructure layer, and that's one we're hoping to fill.

[Matt Bellamy]

So you're Craig, and Craig is a budding digital media star slash podcaster. Should Craig immediately go to you guys and create a profile and make sure that he's starting down the right path? Should any actor or Public person be working with you?

[Nikki Hexum]

Oh yeah. I mean a lot of them are already.

[Matt Bellamy]

And how does one get in touch with you?

[Nikki Hexum]

Right now it's through people that they. I mean you can get a hold of us on our website. We are not hard to get a hold of. You can go to our website, you can reserve a consent id. You can have your agency or your lawyer or your union reach out to us.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah, I mean eventually you have to automate it. Right. Because the volume that you want to work at would require some kind of automation. How do you do this at scale?

[Nikki Hexum]

So we have built out what we call trusted partners, which is places like CAA or unions or large organizations that we can implement with that team on what would work for them, where they can do kind of an umbrella over their entire organization that turns it from an opt out to an opt in. So if I am ca, for instance, and I put up my, my RSL umbrella, everybody under that organization is now a no automatically unless they have chosen to opt in.

[Matt Bellamy]

And CAA has done that. I noticed that caa, the agency is a partner of yours and many of the high profile sponsors, our CIA clients.

[Nikki Hexum]

Yeah, yeah, we got, we got really lucky actually. I think most of the people that we talked to happened to be represented by them and they were really supportive and I think see the value of having a standard. There's a lot of private options right now. They're all very expensive.

[Matt Bellamy]

What are those private options?

[Nikki Hexum]

I don't even know what they're called. I know that there's a couple of big companies that are doing things where you go and you get scanned.

[Matt Bellamy]

Oh, right. Like you have this secret deposit box where all of your IP is stored and if anyone wants to use it, they have to go through your gatekeepers.

[Nikki Hexum]

Yeah. And some of these big companies have those situations already put out. That just doesn't do anything for the rest of the world. Right. If that's behind a private system and I'm a bot and I have no idea to get that. And Tom Cruise is sitting right in front of me. Am I going to go through the trouble of getting through this system when I have no idea how to do that?

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah. And what is the position towards you guys of the guilds like sag, AFTRA and the Writers Guild? Are you working with them? Do they have their own initiatives that they are doing? They have their own standard that they want to implement?

[Nikki Hexum]

As far as I know not. And we've talked to them. We are really, really wanting to work with them. We want them to tell us how to build the right thing. What is it that we need to do that makes it easier? I mean, they've. They advocate for their clients. Right? They advocate for their members.

[Matt Bellamy]

Their members, yeah.

[Nikki Hexum]

Yeah. And so making sure that we're making it easier for them, that their workflow is easy is really important to us. They've done really good work. I mean, it's really important that they participate. Right. Instead of waiting for a system to just show up and scrambling and then trying to change it, which I think is something I see in Hollywood a lot is, oh, well, that's just happening and we'll just pivot when we need to. This is a really rare time in history where you actually can participate in the system that's being built.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah. It's like being around at the inception of file sharing and coming up with some kind of a accepted world where you could not just go on to Napster or any of the other clones and share whatever. There was a format for not doing that.

[Nikki Hexum]

Yeah. I mean, this is it, right? This is that time. This is the time where I, and I've seen. It's actually really heartbreaking to me, especially in music. I'm seeing a bunch of people kind of just give up and say it's too late. You know, it's. It's already here and it's too late. And that breaks my heart because it isn't right. There is so much that is going to change within the next six months to a year.

[Matt Bellamy]

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[Matt Bellamy]

visit zepbound Lilly.com so I'm picturing Sam Altman or Dario at Anthropic or any of these big AI guys looking or listening to this episode and being haha, you know, that's cute. Good for them, good for them trying something. But we're not, I mean we're just not going to do that. Like that's my big fear here is a, that you can't get to scale where it matters and be that they're just like not going to deal with you.

[Nikki Hexum]

I mean they're going to deal with somebody, right? I mean they are maybe. I can't imagine the mass of 25 and under year olds who are literally booing at commencement speeches saying okay, I would not. I just, I don't see a future where. And it's really what we're asking for that hard. We're saying consent matters. This is a human right basically. Why? Why?

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah, but it's money. Can you imagine? It's essentially they would consider it a tax, a tax on what's out there on the Internet.

[Nikki Hexum]

I think this opens markets. I think this completely. Every serious organization, every serious company has rules and regulation and that typically allows you to, to make money. So for me, this open markets, it removes exposure which is ridiculously large for some of these companies.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah, we just saw it today. CNN sued Perplexity. There are a bunch of these lawsuits going on. A lot of them in the publishing world, but also in the video world as well. Disney and Comcast are involved in litigation already with some of these companies. And I did see that there's a new bill In Illinois, an AI safety bill that was actually supported by OpenAI and a couple of these companies. They're trying to get in on the regulations so they have a seat at the table and can help shape it. And maybe they would endorse some kind of an IP protection mechanism that they helped shape.

[Nikki Hexum]

Yeah, and I, I mean we would love for them to come help shape this standard. It needs to be interoper, it needs to be workable at scale. The only standards only work if they're adopted. It's not going to work if it's not adopted by AI companies. Right. It just isn't. We've been reaching out to AI companies We've started conversations with them. I, I think this idea that everybody is a bad player is wrong.

[Matt Bellamy]

Oh, you haven't listened to this show? Every, Everybody does what's in their own best interest.

[Nikki Hexum]

They do, they absolutely do. And humans are kind of the worst at this. Right. We always, if there is a way to exploit something, we will do it immediately.

[Matt Bellamy]

I mean, the Internet, have you ever met David Zaslav? Let's talk about your own best interests here.

[Nikki Hexum]

Yes, but I also believe, I mean, the Internet is a perfect example of this. When it first started, it was just pornography and scamming people. The worst of the worst. Right. And then we developed regulations and rules and we kind of used it differently. And I think we have a pattern of doing this in society. AI I don't think is any different at first. When it came out, we did what we could with it, which was the worst.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah. Well, the interesting thing is if you look at the music business as a comp here and what was going on in the early 2000s with the wild west of file sharing, it did take some big company to step in like Apple and say, not only are we going to honor these copyrights, we're going to create a business around it where these labels can partner with us to sell their music. And we could argue about whether it was a fair price for a certain price and create a business around this act of file sharing. And then lo and behold, streaming becomes the music industry.

[Nikki Hexum]

Yes, yes. I mean, this is the exact same pattern. Right. Which is why it's so hard for me to hear some of my music friends to be like, it's too late. And I'm like, no, it is not.

[Matt Bellamy]

Do you envision some version of a, of an itunes store or an app store where you AI company, you can click on CAA and for a fee you can use their clients that have opted in to train your model, maybe for somebody.

[Nikki Hexum]

That's not our plan.

[Matt Bellamy]

Okay, what is, what is your plan to make this sustainable?

[Nikki Hexum]

We are not involved in money.

[Matt Bellamy]

Right. You don't want to, you guys are not, do not have a profit motive here.

[Nikki Hexum]

No, we don't. We are a public benefit company. We have filed for a 501. We are literally trying to be the most boring standard on the planet.

[Matt Bellamy]

So the company that creates the app store for actors, they can use your standard to make billions of dollars.

[Nikki Hexum]

Yeah. And any other company can because it's a standard. Right. Standards are used by anybody. Hopefully the unions are the people who have, who implement this as a way to Collect fees. Right. I mean, Sound Exchange is an example of what happened when this. You know what I mean? When the world changed in music.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah. Just to. SoundExchange collects revenue on behalf of song owners. And it was a digital creation. It was not part of the old regime.

[Nikki Hexum]

Yeah, exactly. And I think we're going to see something similar like that happen for identity. And, and, and I think the unions or these large companies like caa, who've been doing this for a really long time would probably be well positioned to do that, at least for their clients. Right.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah. Wme, the other rival agency, has made some noise in Washington on this issue and they, and have you worked with them as well? Are you talking to them?

[Nikki Hexum]

We reached out to them a lot and we didn't ever get a response.

[Matt Bellamy]

Oh, maybe they'll hear this, they'll get in touch. Or they probably have their own rival that they're working with. And that's the thing is getting everyone to coalesce around one standard is really tough.

[Nikki Hexum]

It is. I mean, and that's the truth about standards. Right. I, I haven't, as far as I know, there isn't a lot of other standards. There's a lot of other private companies who are. I, and I don't have a problem with those companies. But I think in order for those companies to truly be successful, you still need a standard. Otherwise it's a mob racket. Right. It's like, hey, you got a nice face. I'll keep it safe for you for 20 bucks a month.

[Matt Bellamy]

Right.

[Nikki Hexum]

And then you don't pay that month and the next thing you know, you're like, doing things you never would have done before.

[Matt Bellamy]

It's the public storage of the Internet.

[Nikki Hexum]

Yes. Oh, man. So, I mean, that, that is really important. And I still think there's a lot of room for private companies to do that. I mean, for people who can afford to do extra things, then great, they should be able to do that. That's not our lane. Our lane is that consent shouldn't be paywalled, that this is a layer of the Internet that just has to exist in order for these markets to be open, in order for these things to actually work.

[Matt Bellamy]

Craig, are you in? Are you getting in touch?

[Craig Horbeck]

I will opt in. I'll use the yellow light option.

[Matt Bellamy]

You know, Craig just wants to get paid. That's all he cares about.

[Craig Horbeck]

I do have a question, though, Nikki. Let's say you're Cate Blanchett and you choose the red light option. How does it work? Obviously she, like you said, not Only are her movies everywhere and TV shows and everything, but it's like clips of her on every app that's ever been made, photos of her, her voice is everywhere. How does it actually work? Where if she chooses the red light option, how can you guarantee that her entire likeness, everything she's ever done that's on the most random website you've ever heard of is not being used?

[Nikki Hexum]

Yeah. So I. I mean, the standard itself is not. It doesn'. Invent a new legal right. Right. Or it doesn't automatically really enforce anything. It makes existing rights and permissions and what someone chooses easier for machines to see and hopefully respect. Right. Enforcement still very much depends on the law. And those laws are being written right now. They also depend on contracts and whatever the platform rules are and the terms of service, the fact that of each situation, the real life. I mean, these laws exist in our life right now. For some reason. When we moved them online, we created a system that says none of those rights apply to this new lane. So that's all stuff that's coming right now. And I don't think it's because we're not going to have those rights again. It's just because they're slower. So we just create that notice. And that audit trail that helped show this was when somebody said they didn't want this. This is where it was published when it was checked anytime that happened. And that hopefully builds that foundational layer that legislators and everyone else kind of needs to build on top of to create the system that we all, I think, want, which is, you know, to be able to decide if our face ends up on a naked body doing things we would never do or not.

[Matt Bellamy]

Right. Well, and it's more complicated because, you know, someone like Cate Blanchett, the studios own the rights to those movies that she was in and they would like to exploit them in certain ways. And what if one of the studios that she did a movie for does an AI deal? And can she. Can she stop that? And would the fact that she is in your database complicate those kinds of deals?

[Nikki Hexum]

No. In fact, it doesn't though. I mean, that's.

[Matt Bellamy]

It doesn't. Okay.

[Nikki Hexum]

No, no. Because Kate would have signed a contract with a studio that would have given them certain rights for that certain film.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah. Although a lot of those deal. Do not contemplate what we are talking about today.

[Nikki Hexum]

Yeah, absolutely. And so, like likeness, just because Kate's voice was used in a movie, because that's her voice, does not necessarily give them permission to exploit her voice in Ways were not tied to that contract. Right.

[Matt Bellamy]

And certainly doesn't give Sam Altman the right to exploit her voice. So tell us when this is going to be available.

[Nikki Hexum]

Yeah, so the next month in June. On June 24, we are launching with members of the European Parliament and from the Merode, Kate is announcing that the registry is opening, which is the first portion of the registry is identity. That would allow. We're working with some really large companies right now and building in the implementation to where they can use the wild card for their entire organization. But for everybody else going to the site and allowing and registering your consent in this next month, you would be able to do that whether or not you're okay with your likeness or voice being used.

[Matt Bellamy]

And is that going to be available

[Nikki Hexum]

in the U.S. yeah, it's global.

[Craig Horbeck]

Sorry, Sam Altman, you're going to have to pay me.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah, exactly. Craig, get it on there. And you're going to be a AI billionaire.

[Craig Horbeck]

That's right.

[Matt Bellamy]

All right, thank you very much, Nikki. Appreciate it.

[Nikki Hexum]

Thank you guys so much.

[Matt Bellamy]

Sure. We are back with the call sheet. Craig, big news. Taylor Swift doing a song for Toy Story 5. We all knew it. She screwed up and posted a countdown or whatever the clouds were on her website. Took it down. Lo and behold, a month later, that

[Craig Horbeck]

assistant has been fired.

[Matt Bellamy]

Multiple assistants have been fired. So, like, Disney has been courting Taylor Swift for a while. They overpaid her for the rights to stream her documentary. They're doing this Searchlight movie with her where she's supposedly going to direct a movie for Searchlight that's been in development for a few years now. And now, boom, they got the ultimate prize, which is an original song on the soundtrack of Toy Story 5. I'm gonna go out on a limb here. My prediction today, Oscar nomination for sure for Taylor Swift.

[Craig Horbeck]

Now, is the cynical Matt only saying this because the Academy desperately wants Taylor Swift to perform at the Oscars.

[Matt Bellamy]

Of course, this, this could be her reading her laundry list. Like, this could be her and Travis Kelsey sitting around joking about where they're going to dinner on Friday night. It doesn't matter what the song is. It could be terrible. It's getting nominated. The Academy, they do not push. They do not, you know, influence members at all. But they will do anything in their power to facilitate her getting nominated. And then the ask will go out, hey, what if you perform on the show? It's also a Disney show. The movie will probably have made 1.5 to $2 billion. Big success. She'll want to be associated with it, she'll think she can win. If the song is decent, she'll think she can win and she'll do it and everybody wins.

[Craig Horbeck]

Taylor Swift is really a per. I can see why Disney wants her. She's like multi generational. She's kid safe. She kind of checks every box.

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah, there's nobody better. There's nobody better. The fact that she's willing to. To do Disney stuff is the surprise here.

[Craig Horbeck]

Well, and also what I would say Toy Story is, is the most elevated ip. It is the least sellout feeling IP you could make a song for.

[Matt Bellamy]

Totally. And she's millennial, if nothing else. Millennials love Toy Story. Taylor has a. Has an Emmy. Did you know this? Obviously, I'm pregaming her egot. She's going to obviously go for EGOT during her career.

[Craig Horbeck]

Is it a real Emmy or is it one of those kind of fake Emmys that she squeezed in for some random award like technical achievement?

[Matt Bellamy]

Yeah, it's right on the border. It's. In 2015, she won an Emmy for outstanding creative achievement in interactive media for an original or interactive program. So a digital Emmy for something called amex on staged Taylor Swift experience.

[Craig Horbeck]

Okay, so it was an ad.

[Matt Bellamy]

It was branded. Yeah, it was branded.

[Craig Horbeck]

So this would be like if you won the Golden Globe podcast award for your branded call sheets for Holiday Inn.

[Matt Bellamy]

Holiday Inn would love that. The Golden Globes do not count in EGOT status. So I listen, this is not a daytime Emmy. This is an interactive Emmy. It's borderline.

[Craig Horbeck]

So you're counting this. This includes in the egot.

[Matt Bellamy]

It's borderline. I'm not gonna lie.

[Craig Horbeck]

I don't think it counts. For as popular and skilled and talented as Taylor Swift is, she can get a real Emmy.

[Matt Bellamy]

Okay, but let's. For the benefit, for the purpose of this argument, let's just say it's okay. She's got a Grammy. She's got an Emmy. Tony and Oscar, the tougher ones, I am going to say at some point there will be a Taylor Swift jukebox musical. At some point there will be that. So Tony feels easy. Tony for her, I think is she'll. She'll be involved as a producer in something involving her music. The Oscar is the tough one. And this is, I think, a great shot for her because I don't see her. I mean, I don't want to. I don't see her getting an Oscar outside of the music category. But this is a great opportunity. Huge franchise. Disney has very skilled Oscar campaigners. They have a guy, Tony Angelotti, who's been doing this for years and has won many, many Oscars for Disney's animation group. And if Toy Story 5 is good, remember Toy Story 3 got nominated for best picture.

[Craig Horbeck]

It's a great movie.

[Matt Bellamy]

It's a great movie. But, like, you don't see that very often where the animated movie gets nominated. And I don't think Toy Story 4 did. Check me on that. I don't believe it did. But this one could get nominated. And I think this movie, if this music is decent, it will get nominated and has a chance to win. And Taylor will perform and Disney will be happy because they own ABC and everybody wins.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah, you're right. Toy Story 4 not nominated. And maybe, maybe. I bet you will get a Taylor Swift, Randy Newman thing on stage.

[Matt Bellamy]

Unbelievable.

[Craig Horbeck]

Before Taylor Swift does something solo. Very smart. Much like the NFL, Taylor Swift only gives you about a month or two off before you're back in front of our faces.

[Matt Bellamy]

And it's in mid March, so Super bowl will be over. No Travis conflicts. So hopefully they'll get to seat them in the front row. Everybody wins.

[Craig Horbeck]

Hopefully. Yeah. Yeah.

[Matt Bellamy]

All right, that's the show for today. I want to thank my guest, Nikki Hexum, producer Craig Horbeck, Arter, Matt Peck, and I want to thank you. We'll see you one more time this week.