Taylor Swift and Toy Story Five

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Book your next day at holidayin. com It is Wednesday, june third. The march of artificial intelligence into Hollywood is really ramped up lately AI generated films or AI assisted films were all over the CA market last month Tripeckca film Festival just scheduled what's being called the first full length live action 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 videoide 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 Cent standard. This is a free public registry, which is going to launch june twenty fourth and allow anyone to declare their AI permissions Yes, no. sometometimes, 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 Kate Blanchette She's also got support from her agency, CIA, as well as other CIA clients like George Clooney, Violea Davis, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep M, many more Blanchet 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. nameamely, how is this going to work practically speaking And why would an AI company deal with a rights organization like this So I asked Nikki Hexam, 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 arrtists rights from AI and what you, Hollywood person, can do to safeguard your own image. From the Ringer and Puck. I'm Matt Bellany, and this is the Town Okayay we are here with Nikki Hexam, who is the co founder and CEO of RSL Media and hopefully a new force in the world of AI. Welcome, Nickki Hi, thank you for having me. I wanted to have you on the show because I think it's interesting what you were doing amid barrage of headlines that we are seeing. I feel like the push to AI has really ramped up. 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 AI on the lot where they basically brought in a bunch of filmmakers and journalists and executives and explain 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 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 U a way to say what they allow and what they don't allow 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. 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. So right now, well 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 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 Buing a system that allowed a machine to read that like this at internet scale, was our building an infrastructure to allow that was really necessary if we don't want to always be reactive We're always in this situation where we're playing whackmole right now against machines. And so how 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. Okay, so let's get into the details here. Let's use Kate Blanchette as an example. She's your co founder and a big advocate on this issue. What would you do with Kate Blanchette' thirty, forty year body of work here. Yeah. so basically artle 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 a hundred different videos of her. Yes. The tar clips are everywhere. Yeah. 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 after a union. Yeah, or her guild. I mean, we'll get to the guilds here. 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 stop light system. Green light is G 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 For a fee. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Maybe she wants to get paid, right? So whatever those terms are and whoever she is 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, our 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 And this is hypothetical. I don't know actually what Kate would want. that is very much up her. No, I get it though. But 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 Yeah, a tag that allows the bot to know immediately what it's supposed to do with that. But then that leads to the next question, whyy in the world would any of these AI companies agree to this? 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 probablybably some that really do. There's a lot of large companies that really don't want the exposure of a one point five billion dollars lawsuit, right? whichich is I mean, these are happening all the time in different countries around the world as well, the UAI actct is you know, seven percent fine or something crazy. but for some of these companies, that's hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah. Although to be fair, there's no Solid legal framework. Yeahet that is preventinging companies from using copyrighted material to train models. That is still evolving. 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 start somewhere. It doesn't just magically appear. so And to be clear, the 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. Yeah, I think when mean The music industry is a good example of this. They've had likeness in contracts for a really long time. so they could print your face on a t shirt andll 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 and internet speed has just changed how these things are working at all. U And so we are now playing catch up to something that has moved much further ahead that the law has has, you know, I mean, some people are still wrapping their heads around what this means. We don't havews It's kind of the wild West. I mean, this is early nap and Spotify days, things are changing rapidly right now. 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. 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 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 our goal was to build a standard, something that was free, interoperable for everyone to use no matter where they were on the globe. So it's not an enforcement mechanism. It's merely the standard that the enforcers will use to get what they want Yeah, I mean, serious companies need trust. They need legal certainty, they need enterprise customers. they need operational clarity U 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 The starting points for a conversation. So being able to say, we checked that, like the EUAI 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 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 the one we're hoping to fill. So you're Craig and Craig is a budding digital Media star slash podcaster. shouldhould 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 working with you. Oh, yeah, I mean, a lot of them are already. And how does one get in touch with you? 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 and you can have your agency or your lawyer or your union reach out to us. Yeah. I mean, eventually you have to automate it, right? Because the volume that you want to work at would require someome kind of automation. How do you do this at scale? 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'm CA, for instance and I put up my RSL umbrella, everybody under that organization is now a no automatically unless They have chosen of. And CAA has done that. I noticed that CAA, the agency is a partner of yours and many of the high profile sponsors are CIA clients. Yeah. yeah, we got we got really lucky actually. I think most of the people that We talked to who happen 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. What are those private options? 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. 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 Yeah. And some of these big companies have those situations already put out, It 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 ide to get that. And Tom Cruz 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? 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 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 tellell us how to build the right thing. What is it that we need to do that makes it easier? I mean, they they advocate for their clients, right? They advocate for the members. The meembers, ye. Yeah. And so making sure that we're making it easier 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 whichich 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. Yeah. It's like being around at the inception of file sharing and coming up with some kind of a accepted a 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 Yeah, I mean, this is it, right? This is that time. This is the time where 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 This episode is brought to you by Hulu. Praised as Hulu's fresh spin on crime comedy, Delli Boys returns with an all new season Philly's favorite cornerstory criminal family, the Dars are back with more money, more problems, and more stars, including Fred Armison, Andrew Rynolds, and Kumel Naniani. The Hulu original series Delli Boys is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney pllus for bundle subscribers. Terms applly. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn ads. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first but didn't live up to the hype? Marketers know that feeling They optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions, reach and reacts But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not so great conversation with the CFO LinkedIn has a word for that. 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The lowdown is available for your Emmy consideration on Hulu and Disney Plus for Bundle subscribers So I'm picturing Sam Altman or Darioanthropic or any of these big AI guys looking or listening to this episode and being, 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 B They're just like not gonna deal with you. I mean, they're gonna deal with somebody, right? I mean, they are. Maybe I can't imagine the mass of twenty five 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 it's really what we're asking for that hard. We're saying consent matters. This is a human right basically. Why Why? it's money. Can you imagine? It's essentially, they would consider it a tax tax on what's out there on the internet. I think this opens markets I think this completely every serious organization, every serious company has rules and regulations. And that typically allows you to make money. So for me, this open markets it removes exposure, which is ridiculously large for some of these companies. Yeah we just saw today, CNN suit Pplexity. 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 Op AI 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 And maybe they would endorse some kind of an IP protection mechanism that they helped shape. Yeah,, and I mean, we would love for them to come help shape this standard. It needs to be interoperable. 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 think this idea that everybody is a bad player is wrong. Oh, you haven't listened to this show. Everybody does what's in their own best interest. We 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 immediately. I the interiew. You ever met David Zazlov, Let's talk about your own best interests here 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 in 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 this 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. 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 two thousands 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 file sharing and then Lo and behold, streaming becomes the music industry. Yes, Yes. mean I this is the exact same pattern, right? whichich 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. Do you envision some version of a of an iTune 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 U Maybe for somebody, that's not our plan. Okay. What is What is your plan to make this sustainable? We are not involved in money. Right. You don't want to you guys are not do not have a profit motive here? No, we don't. We are a public benefit company. We have filed for a five hundred one C three. We are literally trying to be the most boring standard on the planet. So the company that creates the app store for actors They can use your standard to make billions of dollars. 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 Just to Sound Exchange collects revenue on behalf of song owners and it was a digital creation. It was not part of the old regime. Yeah, exactly. And I think we're going to see something similar like that happen for identity And and I think the unions or these large companies like CA who've been doing this for a really long time would probably be well positioned to do that at least for their clients, right? Yeah WME, the other rival agency has made some noise in Washington on this issue. they and have you worked with them as well? Are you talking to them? We reached out to them a lot and we didn't ever get evered. Oh Maybe they'll hear this. and 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 It is. I mean and that's the truth about standards, right? 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 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 bracket, right? It's like, hey, you got a nice face. I'll keep it safe for you for twenty bucks a month. Right. 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. It's the public storage of the internet 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 le 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. Creg, are you in Are are you getting in touch? I will opt in. I'll use the yellow light option, you know? Craig just wants to get paid That's all he cares about. I do have a question though, Nikki, let's say you're Kate Blanschit and you choose the red lightight 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 voices 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. Yeah, so I mean, the standard itself is not it doesn't invent a new legal right, right? or it doesn't automatically reallyinforce anything. It makes existing rights and permissions in 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 facts 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 help show this was when somebody said they didn't want this. This is where it was published when it was checked any time 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. Well, and it's more complicated because you someone like Capeline Chet, 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 stop that? And would the fact that she is in your database complicate those kinds of deals? No, in fact, it doesn't though. I mean, that's it doesn't o No, no, because Kate would have signed a contract with the studio would have given them certain rights for that certain film. Yeah though a lot of those deals do not contemplate what we are talking about today 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 that were not tied to that contract, right? And certainly doesn't give Sam Altman the right to exploit her voice. Absolutely So tell us when this is going to be available. Yeah, so the next monthune on june twenty fourth, we are launching. with members of the European Parliament and from the Marad, 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 on And this next month, you would be able to do that, whether or not you're okay with your likeness or voice being used. And is that going to be available in the US? Yeah, it's global. Sorry Sam Altman, you're going to have to pay me. Yeah, exactly. Craig, get it on there and you're going to be a AI billionaire That's right All right, thank you very much. Nicki appreciate it. Thank you guys so much. Sure. We're back with the call sheet, Craig, B news Taylor Swift, doing a song for Toy Story five. 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, am month assistant has been fired. Yeah not. Multiple assistants have been fired 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 seearchlight. 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 fiveive I'm gonna go out on a limb here. My prediction today Oscar nomination for Sure Taylor Swifch Now is the cynical Matt only saying this because the accademy desperately wants Taylor Swift to perform at the Oscars? Of course. what 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 they ask will go out, Hey, what if you perform on the show? It's also a Disney show the movie will probably have made one point five to two billion dollars Big success. She'll want to be associated with it. She'll think she can win if the song is decent She'll thinks she can win And she'll do it and everybody wins. Taylor Swith is really a I can see why Disney wants her. She's like multig generational, She's kids safe She kinda checks every box. Yeah, there's nobody better There's nobody better. The fact that she's willing to do Disney stuff is the surprise here. Well, and also what I would say Toy Story is is the most elevated IP. It is the least Sll out feeling IP you could make a song for Totally. And she's millennial, if nothing else, Millennials love Toy story Taylor has an Emmy. Did you know this Obviously, I'm pre gaming her Egot She's going obviously go for you guysy during her career. Is it a real Emmy or is it one of those kind of fake Emmies that she squeezed in for some random award like technical achievement? Yeah, it's right on the border It's in twenty fifteen, she won an Emmy for outstanding creative achievement in interactive media for an interginal or interactive program. So a digital Emmy for something called AmX Unstaged Taylor Swift Experience. Okay, so it was an ad It was branded, yeah It was branded So it would be like if you won the Golden Globe podcast Award for your branded call sheets for Holiday. Holiday would love that. Golden globes do not count in Egot status. so Listen, this is not a daytime Emmy. this is an interactive Emmy. It's borderline. So you're counting this. This includes in the egy It's borderline. I'm not going to lie. I don't think it counts. for as popular and skilled and talented as Taylor Swift is, she can get a real Emmy. Okay. but let's the for the purpose of this argument, let's just say It's okay 's got a grammy, she's an Emm Okay Cony and Oscar, the tougher ones I am going to say at some point there will be a Taylor Swift Bx musical at some point. For sure. There will be that So Tony feels easy Tony for her, I think is shell 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 pre 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 five is good, remember Toy Story three got nominated for Best Picture. It's a great movie 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 four did. check me on that. I don't believe it did. but This one could get nominated and I think this move if this music is decent, will get nominated and has a chance to win And Taylor will perform and Dizzy will be happy because they own ABC and everybody wins. Yeah, you're right. Toy Story four are not nominated. And maybe maybe I bet you will get a Taylor Swift Randy Newman thing on stage. Unbelievable. Before Taylor Swift does something solo. It's very smart. muchuch like the NFL. Taylor Swift only gives you about a month or two off before you're back