RSL and AI Preferences

RSL is designed to complement the emerging IETF AI Preferences standard proposal. AI Preferences defines a set of allowed and prohibited AI usage cases (e.g., train-ai) for accessing and processing content, but does not define a mechanism for obtaining permission or compensating publishers.

RSL extends AI Preferences by enabling publishers to attach licensing and compensation rules to AI Preferences usage cases through the RSL <permits> and <prohibits> elements.

Example Code

The example robots.txt file below contains an AI Preferences directive that prohibits all AI crawlers or agents from using the site’s content for AI training (train-ai=n).

User-Agent: *
Allow: /

Content-Usage: train-ai=n

Using RSL, publishers can add AI licensing information to their robots.txt file:

User-Agent: *
Allow: /

Content-Usage: train-ai=n
License: https://your-website.com/license.xml

and define the licensing terms for train-ai in the corresponding RSL license file:

<rsl xmlns="https://rslstandard.org/rsl">
  <content url="/">
    <license>
      <permits type="usage">train-ai</permits>
      <payment type="subscription">
        <custom>https://your-website.com/contact-form.html</custom>
      </payment>
    </license>
  </content>
</rsl>