"Kevin Bacon, Kate McKinnon, and Other Creatives Sound Alarm on 'Unjust' Threats Posed by AI"

Thousands of creatives, including renowned actors like Kevin Bacon and Kate McKinnon, alongside various authors and musicians, have signed a statement warning that the unauthorized use of copyrighted materials to train AI models jeopardizes the livelihoods of the artists behind those works. Currently, 11,500 individuals have joined this cause.

The statement asserts: “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.” This initiative was launched by Fairly Trained, an organization advocating for ethical training data practices within the AI industry.

Ed Newton-Rex, CEO of Fairly Trained and former employee of Stability AI, emphasized that while generative AI companies invest heavily in personnel and computing resources, they often seek to utilize training data without compensation, which he views as exploitation of creators.

Multiple professionals and organizations, including News Corp and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), have taken legal action against AI companies for improperly using copyrighted content during AI training. The RIAA and News/Media Alliance have publicly supported Fairly Trained’s statement.

Interestingly, some notable figures are absent from the list of signatories. Scarlett Johansson, who previously criticized OpenAI for allegedly emulating her voice in its GPT-4o model, has not joined the effort, nor have actors Dame Judi Dench and John Cena, who endorsed Meta AI’s voice chat system.