IPTC + PLUS Data Mining Metadata

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Embedded image and video metadata fields for expressing data-mining preferences, including prohibitions on generative-AI training.

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Website
ns.useplus.org/LDF/ldf-XMPSpecification
Latest tracked evidence
Mar 30, 2026IPTC publishes version 2.0 of AI opt-out guidelines
Last checked
Jul 15, 2026
Profile updated
Jul 15, 2026
Primary approach
Preference signal
Practical force
Voluntary signalIt only affects actors that detect and honor the signal; it does not itself prevent reuse.
Pipeline
Collect / Train / Fine-tune
Status rationale
Publicly available or deployable in the latest catalog review.

Enforcement

Voluntary preference signal. Communicates a requested condition or restriction to automated systems.

It only affects actors that detect and honor the signal; it does not itself prevent reuse.

Catalog status describes public availability, not legal validity, adoption, or proven effectiveness.

What it is

IPTC and the PLUS Coalition have added machine-readable data-mining fields to image and video metadata standards so rights holders can express permissions or prohibitions for uses including AI/ML training. The fields carry the signal at the asset level, complementing site-level approaches such as robots.txt or domain-level preference headers, but they do not force recipients to comply.

IPTC + PLUS Data Mining Metadata publishes or proposes a machine-readable preference signal for images and video across the collection, training, and fine-tuning stages. The signal communicates requested conditions; compliance depends on discovery, interpretation, and voluntary support by downstream systems. Public materials describe a currently available initiative; the newest dated source in this profile is “IPTC publishes version 2.0 of AI opt-out guidelines” (March 30, 2026). These details describe the published mechanism and evidence, not a finding about legal validity, adoption, or effectiveness.

Limitations

This is machine-readable rights metadata, not technical access control. Its legal effect varies by jurisdiction, and it can influence use only when the metadata is preserved, detected, interpreted, and honored. Public adoption is harder to measure than crawler-level signals.

Evidence trail

Adoption signals

No public adoption figure found.

Examples

ExifTool write commandSource

IPTC shows this command as a concrete way to attach a PLUS Data Mining value to a video file.

exiftool -XMP-plus:DataMining="Prohibited for Generative AI/ML training" example-video.mp4
Embedded metadata fieldSource

The same IPTC guidance uses this Data Mining value for a generative-AI opt-out.

XMP-plus:DataMining = "Prohibited for Generative AI/ML training"