One of the First Big Anti-AI Campaigns From Hollywood Is Launching Now
Writers, actors and other musicians have come out in support of the Human Artistry Campaign’s “Stealing Isn’t Innovation” push for licensing and opt-out mechanisms for human-created works.
Celebrities including Scarlett Johansson, Cate Blanchett and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are backing a campaign blasting tech companies for training generative AI tools on copyrighted works without express permission.
The “Stealing Isn’t Innovation” campaign from the Human Artistry Campaign, which launches Thursday, protests tech companies’ alleged mass theft of human-created works in order to produce tools that could theoretically compete with real creatives.
On Thursday, the Human Artistry Campaign debuted the awareness campaign and revealed more than 700 supporters behind it, while The New York Times ran an ad for the push.
“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,” one of the campaign’s message proclaims. “The following creators all agree. Do you? If so, come join us.”
In addition to Johansson, Blanchett and Gordon-Levitt, industry figures David Lowery, Fran Drescher, Jennifer Hudson, Kristen Bell, Michele Mulroney, Olivia Munn, Sean Astin and Vince Gilligan all signed their names as backing the campaign. Musicians such as Cyndi Lauper, LeAnn Rimes, Martina McBride and Questlove and the groups MGMT, One Republic, R.E.M. and OK Go have also given their support, as did the authors George Saunders, Jodi Picoult, Roxane Gay and Jonathan Franzen.
The Human Artistry Campaign is composed of a mix of unions representing creators, artists’ rights groups and trade associations like the Writers Guild of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, The NewsGuild, the NFL Players Association and SAG-AFTRA.
