Artificial intelligence is transforming how cultural and media content circulates online. From journalism and literature to images, music, and research, AI systems increasingly rely on vast amounts of existing material to analyse patterns and generate new outputs. Yet the origin of this content, and the rights attached to it, are often difficult to trace. For creators, publishers, and cultural institutions, this raises a pressing question: how can creative works remain visible, traceable, and fairly valued in a digital environment shaped by AI?
Across Europe, another challenge complicates the picture. Media data is often fragmented across different systems. Metadata standards vary, licensing practices differ, and information about rights and ownership is frequently disconnected from the content itself. When this information cannot travel easily between organisations and platforms, it becomes harder to trace where works come from, harder to manage rights, and harder to reuse content responsibly.
The Trusted European Media Data Space (TEMS) is a European initiative designed to address this challenge. By bringing together media organisations, cultural institutions, and technology partners, TEMS works to build a shared environment where content, metadata, and rights information remain connected across systems. In this environment, creative works can circulate more safely, their origins visible, and their conditions of use can be understood by both humans and machines.
Within this initiative, Trial 7 explores practical tools that strengthen transparency around cultural content and intellectual property in the age of AI.
When content, metadata and rights travel together
For cultural content to circulate responsibly in digital environments, the information that describes a work must stay connected to the work itself. Metadata identifies the creator, the source, and the context of a piece of content. Rights information defines how that work may be reused, shared, or licensed.
When these elements are stored separately or managed through incompatible systems, uncertainty quickly emerges. Publishers struggle to track how their content is reused. Cultural institutions find it difficult to share collections. Technology companies lack reliable signals about whether data can be used for training AI systems.
TEMS addresses this problem by encouraging common data practices that allow content, metadata, and rights information to move together across platforms and organisations. When systems can exchange this information in a consistent way, the origin of works remains visible and their conditions of use remain clear. This makes it possible for content to circulate more securely while preserving the rights and attribution of those who created it.
A shared environment for Europe’s media and cultural actors
The strength of TEMS lies in the diversity of the actors involved. The initiative brings together media organisations, publishers, cultural institutions, research centres, and technology partners from across Europe.
Each participant contributes a different piece of the ecosystem. Creators produce the works. Publishers organise and distribute them. Cultural institutions preserve collections and archives. Technology partners develop the infrastructure that allows these elements to connect.
Working within a shared framework makes it possible for these actors to exchange information more reliably and collaborate across sectors that were previously disconnected. Instead of operating in isolation, their systems begin to interact, making it easier for cultural and media content to remain visible, traceable, and reusable across different digital environments.
This collaborative approach reflects a broader European ambition: ensuring that cultural and journalistic production can continue to thrive in the digital age while respecting the rights of creators and the diversity of Europe’s cultural landscape.
How Trial 7 supports trusted media data
Turning these principles into practical tools is precisely what the TEMS trials are designed to explore.
Trial 7 is operated by Panodyssey within the TEMS framework and focuses on mechanisms that help organisations document their content more clearly and specify how that content may be used in digital environments.
One of the initiatives developed in this context is the AI Transparency Notice, created by Panodyssey in collaboration with the Spanish news agency Agencia EFE. This mechanism allows creators to indicate how their work was produced, whether it was created by a human author, generated or co-created by artificial intelligence. It also allows them to specify whether their work may be used for training AI systems. By making this choice explicit, creators can signal whether their content may be included in AI training datasets or whether such use is not authorised. When this information is connected to the metadata describing the work, platforms and technology actors can identify these conditions more easily, reducing ambiguity around how creative content may be reused in AI environments.
Panodyssey also integrates account certiffication mechanisms for both individuals and organisations publishing on the platform. By associating content with identifiable actors, these mechanisms reinforce accountability and make it easier to trace the origin of works circulating online.
Within the broader TEMS architecture, Trial 7 illustrates how transparency tools, structured metadata, and documented rights can work together to support a more trustworthy and interoperable media data ecosystem.
What this changes for the media ecosystem
When content, metadata, and rights information stay linked across systems, the impact goes well beyond technical infrastructure. The origin of content and the conditions under which it may be reused become easier to trace, significantly reducing legal uncertainty for publishers, cultural institutions, and technology actors working with large datasets.
Licensing information can travel with the content itself, making rights management more straightforward and avoiding the fragmented processes that often complicate reuse.
Richer metadata also improves discoverability, helping cultural works to be found, referenced, and connected across platforms and digital services.
With clearer conditions of use attached to each work, licensing agreements become easier to establish. Media organisations can share and monetise their content with greater confidence, knowing that the rights attached to each work stays visible and documented.
Towards a more transparent media data ecosystem
The work carried out within Trial 7 illustrates how practical mechanisms can clarify the relationship between content, metadata, and rights in digital environments. When this information remains connected, media organisations gain greater visibility over how their works circulate, creators retain clearer control over their content, and technology actors can rely on clearer signals about the conditions under which data may be reused.
These developments are part of a broader European reflection on how cultural and media data should circulate in the age of artificial intelligence. A study published by the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS) — A European news streaming platform – Study on European added value and governance (Panel for the Future of Science and Technology, European Parliament, PE 774.661, July 2025) — highlights the importance of strengthening cooperation between European platforms and media actors in order to build a more trusted and autonomous digital ecosystem.
By connecting actors across the cultural and media landscape and ensuring that information about creative works can move reliably between systems, initiatives such as TEMS help build a more transparent and trustworthy digital environment. Through Trial 7, this approach takes practical form: transparency mechanisms, structured metadata, and documented rights make it possible to support innovation while ensuring that creative work continues to be recognised and protected within Europe’s emerging media data space.