×

The knowledge that
made AI possible
belongs to everyone.

The infrastructure to govern it does not exist yet. We are building it with the researchers, institutions, legal advocates, and communities already working on the pieces.

Get Involved

Who we are

AI Commons is a nonprofit that builds the shared coordination and trust layer for consent-aware, provenance-rich AI. Every AI system that can write, reason, translate, or create learned to do so from the recorded work of human beings – centuries of effort, most of it given freely. We exist to ensure that the systems built from that shared inheritance remain accountable to the people they came from, not only to the organizations that built them. We do not train frontier models. We build the infrastructure that makes AI possible to govern and trust.

The urgency

Why now

70%+

of widely used training datasets omit licensing information

Aug
2026

EU AI Act enforcement begins.. institutions are not ready

~50%

of major training datasets contain errors in the data they do report

Every
institution

deploying AI is duplicating compliance work privately, or not deploying at all

The work

What we're building

Five interconnected pieces of infrastructure that do not exist yet.. and need to.

1

Provenance and Consent Registry

Machine-readable records of origin, licensing, consent status, reservations, and transformations so institutions can know what trained the AI they are using, and prove it to a regulator.

2

AMPL Licensing and Policy Toolkit

Modular contract tools that make permissions between creators and AI builders explicit, portable, and operational across jurisdictions. No more invisible pipelines.

3

Compliance Evidence and Evaluation Infrastructure

Reusable manifests, model cards, benchmark suites, and audit protocols that are built once, shared across institutions, instead of duplicated at enormous cost by each one separately

4

Reusable Cleared Artifacts

Datasets, multilingual corpora, benchmarks, tools, and reference models with lineage and terms clear enough to travel across borders, sectors, and use cases.

5

Accountability and Redress

Dispute intake, correction pathways, audit support, versioned records, and legal architecture, so that when something goes wrong, there is somewhere to go.
Get involved

Who This Is For

FOR FUNDERS

Put capital where the leverage is.

AI infrastructure will be funded one way or another. The question is where that capital lands. Registries, legal tools, multilingual corpora, audit methods. These are roads, not horses. Built once, used indefinitely.
-> Talk to us about funding
FOR BUILDERS

Build on a foundation that travels.

Publish lineage. Respect permissions. Contribute improvements back. The commons gives you cleared datasets, reusable compliance evidence, and a shared trust layer, so you are not starting from zero every time.
-> Explore what we're building
FOR GOVERNMENTS & INSTITUTIONS

Require what you can actually verify.

Procurement standards, provenance requirements, and evidence packs that hold up to audit and not just brand promises. AI Commons builds the operational layer that makes responsible deployment possible at scale.
-> Contact us
FOR CREATORS & THE PUBLIC

You are the source.

The knowledge that built these systems came from all of us- from every person who ever wrote something down, taught something, made something, shared something. Which means none of us are outsiders asking for access.
-> Read the manifesto

What We Will Not Do

We think it matters to be clear about what we are not:
— Try to outspend hyperscalers in frontier training.
— Ask institutions or creators to trust invisible pipelines.
— Impose one governance model on every sector or jurisdiction.

Built With and Alongside

MIT Media Lab
Harvard Berkman Klein Center
Creative Commons
EleutherAI
Wikimedia Foundation
Common Crawl
Open Source Initiative
IBM
Tidelift
Public Knowledge
Anaconda
Digital Futures Lab
Khazanah Research Institute
Masakhane African Languages Hub
The Collective Intelligence Project
AI Initiative, University of Pretoria
ITS Rio
CeRAI, IIT-Madras
Derechos Digitales
Karya
GxD Hub
roost
Cognizant AI
International Innovation Corps
Cosmos Institute
Emergent Research
Advanced AI Society
Hugging Face
OpenMined
Cooperative Futures Institute
Our history

A Decade of Building

AI Commons was founded in 2016 — before most institutions were asking these questions.

2016

FOUNDING
AI Commons is Founded
AI Commons began as a conversation about whether AI would amplify inequalities or become shared infrastructure. The question kicked off a series of convenings among institutions who shared a concern: AI would either amplify existing inequalities or become a transformative resource for collective benefit, depending on how it was governed.

Dec 2025

EVENT
AI Commons 2.0 Kickoff: Berkman Klein Center

Harvard University
Over two days, 30+ researchers, builders, archivists, and legal experts
convened to prototype the missing layer of public AI: a consent-aware,
provenance-rich substrate that human institutions have always built for
transformative technologies through libraries, archives, peer review, and
shared public memory. Three interdependent workstreams emerged: data
and provenance standards, legal and policy infrastructure, and shared
training pilots. The goal was not total victory but irreversibility, building
things that matter even if we fail.
Link: aicommons.cc

Jan 2026

EVENT
From Intelligence to Interdependence

World Economic Forum, DavosThirty years after John Perry Barlow wrote the Declaration of the Independence ofCyberspace, his daughter Amelia Rose Barlow joined AI Commons and the
Cooperative Futures Institute to ask what the next declaration must be. The session,
held at Davos as a “renegade lightning activation,” treated cooperation not as a moral
aspiration but as critical infrastructure: something that must be intentionally designed,
governed, and maintained.Davos was the moment it became part of a longer
declaration.

Feb 20, 2026

PARTNERSHIP

Global South Network for Trustworthy AI Launch

India AI Impact Summit, New Delhi
AI Commons joins as one of 15 founding members, launched before delegations from
100+ countries at the first global AI summit hosted by a Global South nation. Regional
hubs launching in South Africa and Brazil.
-> digitalfutureslab.in/news/launch-of-global-south-network-for-trustworthy-ai

Mar 2026

EVENT

Funding the Commons: Designing Capital for Public AI

Frontier Tower, San Francisco
At Funding the Commons 2026, AI Commons curated and hosted a full-day Funders Track on Floor 16 of Frontier Tower. The day moved from systems to mechanisms to experiments, mapping the full spectrum of capital available for commons infrastructure, from grants and retroactive public goods funding to cooperative structures and experimental treasury systems. The critical insight that emerged: lack of coordination is a way bigger problem than lack of capital. -> Learn more: https://www.fundingthecommons.io/ftc-frontiertower

2016 – present

EVENT SERIES

AI for Good Summits

ITU / UN, Geneva
Nearly a decade of participation in the earliest sustained convenings dedicated to what
AI should be for, not merely what it can do.
Learn more:
https://aiforgood.itu.int/introducing-ai-commons-a-framework-for-collaboration-to-achieve-global-impact/

2018

PUBLICATION

AI Problem-Solving Framework

An early framework distinguishing AI as competitive capability versus AI as shared infrastructure, shifting the terms of discourse in several institutional contexts. Read here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jI4cq6febePa4OiZ_He7L5skUaYpHL8EMlcvHVRuR5w/edit?usp=sharing

2018 – 2019

RESEARCH

AI Licensing Mechanisms

Among the first attempts to design a licensing architecture for AI built on shared knowledge. The direct precursor to what we are building now with AMPL.

2019 – 2021

INITIATIVE

The Global Data Pledge

A multi-stakeholder initiative establishing shared principles and commitments around data governance in the age of AI. Learn more:
Global data pledge launch – A foundation for tomorrow

2022 – 2024

INITIATIVE

Scaling Responsible AI · GPAI

Global Partnership on AI
Sustained engagement on what scaling responsible AI requires institutionally clarifying that the gap between aspiration and practice is primarily an infrastructure gap. Learn more: https://www.oecd.org/en/about/programmes/global-partnership-on-artificial-intellige nce.html

2023

POLICY

Scaling Responsible AI · GPAI

Hiroshima, Japan
Contribution focused on the infrastructure conditions required to make shared AI governance principles operational rather than merely aspirational.
Learn more:
https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/g7-hiroshima-process-on-generative-artificial-intelligen ce-ai_bf3c0c60-en.html

Feb 2026

EVENT

AI Commons x Khoj · India AI Impact Summit

New Delhi, with Khoj Studios
Part exhibition, part working commons, part long-table salon. AI became legible not through explanation but through experience.
Learn more:
https://commonkhoj.org/

Mar 2026

EVENT

From Automation to Flourishing, A Private Salon

Palo Alto, hosted by Mei Lin Fung, VP UN AI for Good
Around Mei Lin’s kitchen table, a small group gathered to discuss the transition of AI from a tool of automation to an instrument of mass flourishing. The guest of honor was Kiren Kumar, Deputy Chief Executive of IMDA Singapore and a primary architect of Singapore’s digital economy, whose work focuses on building the “public rails” that enable cross-border innovation while ensuring technological advancement leads to broad-based societal benefit.

Apr 2026

INITIATIVE

AI Commons x Global South Network: Working Sessions

Virtual
Follow-on sessions exploring how AI Commons frameworks can support Global South institutions in contributing high-value datasets with clear terms and governance participation.

Stay connected

Events & latest

RECENT
February, 2026
India AI Impact Summit, New Delhi

Global South Network for Trustworthy AI is Launched

AI Commons joined as one of 15 founding members of the Global South Network for Trustworthy AI, launched at the India AI Impact Summit, the first global AI summit hosted by a Global South nation, with delegations from 100+ countries. The Network addresses a critical gap: Global South institutions steward high-value data in health, climate, agriculture, and language, but face legal uncertainty and limited influence in global AI governance. Regional hubs are being established in South Africa and Brazil.
-> Launch blog: https://digitalfutureslab.in/news/launch-of-global-south-network-for-trustworthy-ai-at-the-india-ai-impact-summit-2026
RECENT
March 2026
Frontier TowerSan Francisco

Funding the Commons 2026: Designing Capital for Public AI

How do we fund systems that are meant to belong to everyone? AI Commons curated and hosted the full-day Funders Track at Funding the Commons 2026, mapping the spectrum of capital available for commons infrastructure and moving from theory into live experimentation. The critical insight: the problem is not a lack of capital. It is a lack of coordination. The day ended with direct matchmaking between funders and builders working on shared AI infrastructure.

The knowledge that built these systems came from all of us — from every
person who ever wrote something down, taught something, made something,
shared something. Which means none of us are outsiders asking for access.
We are the source

— AI Commons Manifesto, 2026

Work with us

Get in touch

Whether you are a funder, a builder, a researcher, an institution, or someone who just believes this work matters — we want to hear from you. Tell us who you are and what you are working on.