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Scarlett Johannsson, R.E.M., Vince Gilligan and over 700 other artists are demanding that tech companies stop “stealing” their work in order to train AI models. A new campaign called “Stealing isn’t Innovation” demands that AI companies take “the responsible, ethical route” through licensing and partnerships, according to the website.
“America’s creative community is the envy of the world and creates jobs, economic growth and exports,” a statement on the website reads. “But rather than respect and protect this valuable asset, some of the biggest tech companies, many backed by private equity and other funders, are using American creators’ work to build AI platforms without authorization for copyright law.”
The group adds that the “illegal intellectual property grab” has resulted in an information ecosystem dominated by “misinformation, deepfakes and a vapid artificial avalanche of low-quality materials [‘AI slop’]… threatening America’s AI superiority and international competitiveness.”
OpenAI once argued that it’s “impossible” to train AI without copyrighted materials, since “copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression.” However, actors, musicians and authors take issue with that idea, particularly when they see their likenesses or work repurposed as slop or worse by large language models (LLMs).
Johansson, for one, previously threatened OpenAI with legal action in 2024 over a ChatGPT voice assistant that effectively cloned her voice. More recently, Elon Musk’s Grok has been accused of creating millions of sexualized images of real people in just days, according to a report today from The New York Times.
“Big Tech is trying to change the law so they can keep stealing American artistry to build their AI businesses — without authorization and without paying the people who did the work. That is wrong; it’s un-American, and it’s theft on a grand scale,” the group proclaimed.
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