Over 13,000 artists condemn unauthorised use of their work for AI development

Thousands of artists including ABBA singer Bjorn Ulvaeus, Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, Hollywood actor Julianne Moore and Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro have signed an online statement warning about the unlicensed use of artificial intelligence.

Some 13,500 music, literature, screen and stage personalities have signed the statement as fears mount over tech companies using existing creative works to train AI models without permission from their original creators.

“The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted,” says the brief statement.

Hollywood studios have been experimenting with AI in recent years — from bringing deceased movie stars back using realistic “digital replicas” to using computer-generated background figures to reduce the number of actors needed for battle scenes.

Similar fears have gripped other creative industries. The statement was organised by British composer and former AI executive Ed Newton-Rex, The Guardian reported.

Newton-Rex told the newspaper that generative AI companies including his former employer Stability AI, were using copyrighted content to train their models without paying the original creators.

“When AI companies call this ‘training data,’ they dehumanise it. What we’re talking about is people’s work — their writing, their art, their music,” he said.

Last year, authors including John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George RR Martin sued OpenAI for “systematic theft on a mass scale.” Hollywood stars including Pedro Pascal, Jane Fonda and Mark Hamill backed a sweeping AI safety bill in California last month. This bill was ultimately vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom.

Other artists have chosen to collaborate with AI. Facebook owner Meta last week announced that Hollywood actor Casey Affleck and horror studio Blumhouse were partnering to test its AI movie-generating software by making a series of short films.

Other famous signatories to Monday’s statement include The Cure frontman Robert Smith, Norweighen pop artist AURORA, author James Patterson and actor Kevin Bacon.