More than 10,000 professional actors, musicians, writers and other creators have signed a petition calling for AI not to use their work without permission for training purposes. British composer Ed Newton-Rex wrote the declaration and set up the collection of signatures. The ranks of signatories include many famous names. They range from Hollywood stars like Kevin Bacon and Julianne Moore to musicians and record composers like Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus and bestselling authors Harlan Coben and Ted Chiang. The statement itself is brief and to the point:
“The unlicensed use of creative works to train generative AI poses a major and unfair threat to the livelihoods of the people behind these works and must not be allowed. »
Essentially, the signatories fear that their copyrighted works are contributing without their permission to the massive amounts of data used to train generative AI models behind ChatGPT, Gemini, Meta AI and many other text creation tools , image, audio and video. They claim this violates various intellectual property laws and regulations.
Alongside individual celebrities, the statement garnered endorsement from numerous organizations across the creative sector. SAG-AFTRA, the American Federation of Musicians, Universal Music Group and the International Publishers Association are just a few of the signatories who have signed on in support.
There is also a question of compensation. For example, Meta sent big paychecks to celebrities for permission to use their voices with its new Meta AI assistant. Without that, these complaints cause problems, like when OpenAI was accused of imitating Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT in imitation of the movie Her.
Newton-Rex is familiar with the AI space, having previously worked on AI generative audio models at Stability AI. He claimed he left the company in part because he believed Stability AI had gone too far in relying on the fair use doctrine to train its models. He now runs Fairly Trained, which describes itself as a “nonprofit certifying generative AI companies for more equitable data training practices.”
AI Repulsion
This is far from the first trial of this type. OpenAI alone has several ongoing cases from writers who claim ChatGPT infringed on their work, while Suno, Udio and other AI music creators face lawsuits from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and major music labels. Complaints, legal and otherwise, are growing as the AI tools they speak out against explode in popularity. They are one facet of currently unanswered larger ethical and regulatory questions surrounding AI models and their training data.
You likely won’t notice any impact on AI tools in the near term, but the signatories clearly hope to bring the debate over ethical AI training to the forefront and shape the ultimate form of regulations and laws surrounding the practice. This won’t do much on its own, but in tandem with resolving legal challenges and new regulations, it could be a factor in how AI companies design and build their models in the years to come or If the current system of remuneration for creative work looks pretty much like it does today.
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