London-based The Mise En Scène Company has unveiled Human Provenance in Film, a no-cost AI disclosure standard for the film and TV industry, opening consultation at the Cannes Film Market and inviting participation from producers and distributors through to insurers, platforms, and exhibitors, with a deadline of Oct. 31.
The taxonomy groups AI use into three designations – No AI Used, Assistive AI, and Generative AI – intended to travel through existing sales and distribution paperwork in a form accessible to independent productions and scalable across the entire supply chain. The standard is offered under a CC BY 4.0 open license – meaning any producer, distributor, or platform can adopt and adapt it freely without fee or permission, provided they credit the source – with governance eventually transferring to an independent industry body.
The initiative grew out of MSC’s decision to affix a “No AI Used” label to its marketing materials at the European Film Market in Berlin earlier this year, where the company was presenting “Forelock,” starring David Krumholtz, and “Billy Knight,” with Al Pacino and Charlie Heaton.
“We need a common language, a common understanding, and a collective industry agreement on how to navigate AI. HPF provides that. It is simple, it resonates, and it is urgent,” said Paul Yates, MSC’s CEO and HPF spokesperson.
Angelina Lamke, who leads the initiative, added: “I spent twelve years at Google watching platforms scale and contract once the investor money dried up and low value products died out. The film industry has a genuine chance to protect itself from the slop proliferation problem already overwhelming YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Spotify. Agree on a common language, start collecting real audience demand signals, and you have the commercial intelligence to know what your audiences actually want before you sign a billion dollar deal with a generative AI company whose product may not exist next year, or will be priced out of reach once they need to show returns to their investors.”
The standard draws on findings from Deloitte and Baringa showing that 77% of consumers want to know whether content was made with AI, and that 70% would prefer a film or show produced by humans to one generated by AI.
Both the taxonomy and the Statement of Shared Intent can be accessed at humanprovenance.film, where responses to the consultation are being accepted until Oct. 31.
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