400 Hollywood Stars Warn Trump Not to Let AI Companies Exploit Copyright Laws
Over 400 Hollywood creative leaders wrote an open letter urging the U.S. government to stop companies like Open AI and Google from weakening copyright rules.
Leading filmmakers, writers, actors, musicians, and others submitted a letter to President Donald Trump’s White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy warning that “America’s global AI leadership must not come at the expense of our essential creative industries.”
Earlier this year, President Trump ordered his administration advisors to formulate an “AI Action Plan” for the U.S. and has asked for input from the country’s private sector, government, and academia.
Hollywood stars — such as Severance director Ben Stiller, Paul McCartney, Ron Howard, Cate Blanchett, Cynthia Erivo, and Matrix co-creator Lilly Wachowski — penned the letter in response to recent submissions to the U.S. government from OpenAI and Google, which asserted that the companies should be given unrestricted access to copyrighted material to train AI models.
In a 15-page letter, OpenAI, the start-up behind ChatGPT and DALL-E, says that if AI companies are not allowed to train their models on copyrighted material in the U.S., China will take the lead in the AI race.
The Hollywood creatives condemned these requests and urged the U.S. government to uphold existing copyright protections against AI.
“It is clear that Google (valued at $2Tn) and OpenAI (valued at over $157Bn) are arguing for a special government exemption so they can freely exploit America’s creative and knowledge industries, despite their substantial revenues and available funds,” the letter says.
“There is no reason to weaken or eliminate the copyright protections that have helped America flourish.
“Not when AI companies can use our copyrighted material by simply doing what the law requires: negotiating appropriate licenses with copyright holders — just as every other industry does.”
The group called for AI companies to negotiate “appropriate licenses” with copyright holders, adding that “access to America’s creative catalog of films, writing, video content, and music is not a matter of national security.”
Additional signatories of the letter include filmmakers such as Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron, Sam Mendes, Benny Safdie, Judd Apatow, and Mark Ruffalo.
The use of copyrighted material in AI training remains highly controversial, as many companies continue to train models on human-created content without consent or compensation.
AI companies have faced numerous lawsuits from photo agencies, news outlets, and artists which allege unlawful use of their copyrighted content.
Image credits: Header photos licensed via Depositphotos.
