Say how AI may use a picture

A creator can say, on the record, whether their picture may be used to train AI. The statement goes two places at once: inside the file as a signed C2PA assertion, and onto Monad as a dated entry only the passport's holder can write.

Both halves matter because the file half can be taken out. A platform that recompresses your JPEG throws the manifest away, and with it the line saying you refused. The chain half survives that, because it was never in the file.

This is not a lock. It is a record. What it does and does not do is at the bottom of this page.

The three choices#

The studio and the passport page both offer the same three, as plates you pick one of.

Under the plates is "answer use by use", which opens the four uses and lets you set each one separately. A picture can be open to inference and closed to training. The plates are the common answers, not the only ones.

Saying nothing is also a choice, and it is the one every passport starts in. Nothing is sent, the chain holds no entry, and the passport page says so in its own words: nobody has written a statement for this picture, and it is reported as silence because that is what it is. Silence is not permission.

The four uses#

They come from the Creator Assertions Working Group's Training and Data Mining assertion, version 1.1. Moolam did not invent them, and the contract names the standard on chain so a reader never has to guess what a value means.

Each one is allowed, notAllowed, constrained, or not stated at all. Not stated is not permission: it means the creator has said nothing about that use.

Ask me first, and what a machine does with it#

"Ask me first" needs somewhere to ask, so it comes with a conditions text. A licence name, a page to read, or an address to write to. At most 256 bytes, plain ASCII, and the register refuses a statement that says conditions apply without saying what they are.

The standard is explicit about the case where nobody can ask. In its words: "In the absence of additional information, constrained shall be treated as equivalent to notAllowed."

So a crawler that reads your conditions and cannot reach you has to treat the picture as closed. That is the rule the vocabulary already carries, and Moolam prints it under every "ask first" statement rather than leaving a reader to find it.

Where you state it#

In the studio, at the moment of making#

Both panels, the upload one and the agent one, carry the three plates before anything is signed. Pick one and the words go into the C2PA manifest the verify service signs into your file, and into the metadata pinned to IPFS. Then, once the registration is confirmed on chain, the studio sends a second transaction that writes the same words to the consent register. The receipt shows both.

Stating it here is the only way the file itself carries your answer, because the manifest is signed before the passport exists and cannot be added to afterwards.

On the passport page, at any time#

Open a passport you hold and the section "How AI may use this picture" has the same three plates under "Say how AI may use it". Only the wallet the registry says holds that passport sees the control at all. This writes to the chain only: a file already pinned is not rewritten.

Both are free to you. Moolam pays the network fee through Privy's sponsorship, the same way it pays for registering. The statement is a plain transaction from your own wallet, so nothing about it depends on Moolam staying online afterwards.

Changing your mind#

Write a new statement. The old one is not edited and not deleted: it stays in the history with its date, and the new one becomes the one that stands. That is the whole point of a dated record. Anyone asking what you allowed last March gets last March's answer, not today's.

To go back to saying nothing at all, set all four uses to not stated. That takes the earlier statement out of force without hiding that you ever made it.

One rule bounds this. The same wallet must wait ten minutes before changing the same picture again. When the wait is on, the control locks and says when it opens: the register takes one statement per wallet every ten minutes for the same picture. The wait exists because Moolam pays for these transactions, and it stops one account turning the sponsorship into a bill.

The ten minutes follow the wallet, not the picture. A new holder after a transfer does not wait, so a seller writing a statement just before a sale cannot lock the buyer out.

What a transfer does#

A passport is an ERC-721, so it can be sold or given away. The statement stands until the new holder changes it, and from then on only the new holder can write. The history shows who wrote what and when, so a reader can see the statement was made by the person who held it then, not the person who holds it now.

What it does not do#

This is the honest part, and it is short.

• It stops nobody by itself. No crawler is obliged to read it, and nothing in the contract can make one. What it does is remove the excuse. A company that trains on a picture whose holder wrote "not for AI training" on a public chain, with a date, cannot say it did not know.
• It proves no copyright. It records what the passport's holder stated. Moolam does not check who owns the rights to a picture, and a passport proves who registered first rather than who created. The trust model states that narrowly.
• It is not a compliance badge. Writing a statement here does not make you or anyone else compliant with the EU AI Act, the Code of Practice, or anything else. Rules and standards says where Moolam sits against those texts and where it does not.
• Read it beside the dispute status. A statement on a passport whose record is under challenge should not be relied on, because the holder's word rests on a record that is in question. The verify service returns both facts together for that reason.

How anyone checks it#

The home page#

The film's fourth chapter, "Stated", is the statement itself. The camera drops to the lower edge of the picture it is telling the story on, the register's rule draws itself from the registration day to today, a notch lands on the day the holder wrote their word, and the four uses stamp in beside it. Every mark on it is read from MoolamConsent for that passport, so a passport nobody has written a statement for plays the film without the chapter rather than showing an empty one.

The passport page#

The section "How AI may use this picture" draws the passport's life as one rule with a day scrubber. Drag the thumb to any day and the page asks the chain what was in force then, rather than showing today's answer with an old date on it. Under it are the four uses as rows, the conditions text if there is one, who stated it, when, and the dated history.

A verify result#

Upload any copy of the picture, even one with the metadata stripped, and the answer carries the holder's statement as a stamp under the match. That is the lookup an AI company makes: from the pixels alone to the creator's own word and the date they wrote it.

The chain itself#

Nothing here needs Moolam. The register is a plain contract anyone can read.

export PATH="$HOME/.foundry/bin:$PATH"
cast call 0x1151E69a82947920546e779c4C8c785b2a3C1277 \
  "consentOf(bytes32)(bool,(uint64,address,(uint8,uint8,uint8,uint8),string))" \
  0xcdb25d3755452efa3b746f168cf9cefd3a1b693ab2b81d260a2d64f13d771638 \
  --rpc-url https://rpc.monad.xyz

true
(1789717128 [1.789e9], 0x85a88Ca81ff5f681D96AB86fa60ccB8452A139a6, (2, 2, 2, 2), "")

That is one real picture, monsoon-fishing-nets-drying. (2, 2, 2, 2) is not allowed on all four uses, written by the wallet that held it at unix second 1789717128, which is 2026-09-18T07:38:48Z. Every function, every error and the query for a past date are in MoolamConsent.

Finding the pictures that carry one#

Explore narrows the registry by what holders have said: "Open to AI use", "Not for AI training", "Ask first" and "Nothing stated", each one a shareable address like /explore?ai=open, and every plate that carries a statement shows it with the date it was written.

The masthead counts how many pictures carry one, and the whole sheet is a single indexed query against Envio rather than a walk over the chain. The same query is on the GraphQL page if you want to run it yourself.