ANSI convened the 2026 Legal Issues Forum: Standards at a Crossroads—AI Policy, Practice, and Protection on July 30 in Denver as part of the ANSI Innovation Summit. The message from the stage: standards developers can no longer sit out the AI fight. Three panels carried the conversation forward in stages—first, where SDOs stand today on AI access to their own content; then, what companies and system integrators are actually building on top of that content; and finally, what the law does and doesn't yet allow, and what SDOs can do about it right now.
Elham Tabassi, director of the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative and senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development Program at The Brookings Institution, opened with a keynote that situated standards at the center of global AI governance—noting the role of standards in making AI trustworthy and the challenge of keeping pace with regulatory demands.
A spectrum of SDO responses
The first panel, moderated by Tabassi, made clear there's a real range of views on how SDOs should handle AI access to their content today—from outright prohibition to active piloting and licensing. Panelists debated whether machine-readable, AI-friendly standards formats make access easier to control or simply hand AI developers a ready-made dataset; what workarounds companies use when SDOs restrict access; and what recourse, if any, SDOs have when AI developers decline to license and bet on fair use. Underneath it all sat a harder question: if AI trains on standards content for free, what happens to the volunteer experts who build that content in the first place—and does anyone outside the room understand what's at stake?
What companies and system integrators are building
The second panel, moderated by Daniel Vreeman of HL7 International, turned to what's actually getting built. Panelists described live AI-enabled products already built on licensed standards content, and where licensing terms are the biggest obstacle to scaling them further. The panel also sized up the gap between enterprise demand for AI-enhanced access to standards and how far today's SDO licensing terms actually meet that demand. On the compliance side, panelists also touched on the governance questions that arise when organizations want to audit AI tools against a standard, including who ends up holding the risk if something goes wrong. The panel closed by naming where SDOs are right to hold the line, and what they shouldn't concede.
Shaping the legal landscape
The third panel, moderated by Miranda Means of Kirkland & Ellis LLP, opened with Jorge Contreras's overview of the copyright case law shaping how courts are treating AI and standards content. From there, the rest of the panel turned practical, working through how SDOs can protect their IP across this shifting landscape: what the publishing industry already knows about licensing content to AI companies that SDOs are only now catching up to; what collective licensing infrastructure already exists and where the gaps are; the federal policy signals coming out of Washington; and the contract terms actually getting fought over in AI licensing deals today, from liability allocation to use rights. The panel closed with the practical question: what's the first move for an SDO with no AI policy yet, and what should the general counsel in the room do before they leave Denver?
Cross-cutting priorities
A few priorities kept surfacing all day: licensing terms built for machines, not just human readers; clear provenance and version control so downstream users know exactly what they're getting; and direct engagement with lawmakers on AI-related harms and licensing needs.
What continues
ANSI will keep coordinating with SDOs on AI licensing frameworks and keep convening the standards community as these questions evolve.
Speakers included Christopher Carnahan (Aerospace Industries Association); Jorge L. Contreras (University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law); Grant Hunter (Outsell); Roy Kaufman (Copyright Clearance Center); Andrew G. Kireta Jr. (ASTM International); Danny Manimbo (Schellman); Austin Mayron (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office); Leslie McKay (SAE International); Miranda Means (Kirkland & Ellis LLP); Duane Newman (Accuris); Joan O’Neil (International Code Council); Rich Spilde (Holland & Hart LLP); Elham Tabassi (Brookings Institution); and Daniel Vreeman (HL7 International).