As a dedicated fan and writer who has spent countless hours crafting stories and scripts, I wholeheartedly support the Writers Guild of America’s stand against the unauthorized use of our works as AI training data. For years, we have toiled over our creations, pouring our hearts and souls into every line, every character, and every plot twist. To see these valuable works being exploited without our permission or compensation is not only unfair but also a direct attack on the creative process itself.
The Writers Guild of America is strongly urging Hollywood’s leading production companies to publicly address allegations that they are utilizing the work of its members for training artificial intelligence systems.
In a letter dispatched on Wednesday, the heads of WGA West and East urged these companies to take swift legal measures against any entities that have leveraged writers’ work for training AI tools, addressing the CEOs of Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, Paramount Global, NBCUniversal, Sony, Netflix, and Amazon MGM Studios.
As a passionate gamer and creator, I can’t help but feel that it’s high time for the game studios to step up and take an active role. For years, we’ve been battling piracy in this industry, only to see tech companies casually swoop in and reap the benefits of our hard work by pilfering entire libraries of content for their own profit. It just doesn’t seem fair!
The letter references an article published in The Atlantic on November 18th, which disclosed that a dataset utilized by Apple, Meta, Anthropic, Salesforce, Nvidia, among others, was trained based on the works of film and TV writers. Instead of using scripts, Alex Reisner, the reporter, stated that this data set gathered information from a site called OpenSubtitles.org, which contained dialogue from shows like Breaking Bad, Twin Peaks, as well as Academy Awards broadcasts.
The union asserts that this report substantiates the fact that tech firms have exploited the intellectual property of studios – a rich trove of works produced over generations by union workers. According to them, once they’ve obtained this data, these tech companies are now trying to sell expensive services back to the studios that mimic the stolen creations made by WGA members and Hollywood labor.
As a gamer, I’m part of this community where we all have a contract with the big game developers. This contract has a point that we, the players, believe states that the developers are obligated to protect their intellectual property rights, in our case, the game scripts and designs, on behalf of the creators, which would be the game writers in this scenario.
Read the letter in full below.
The November 18th Atlantic article titled “There’s No Longer Any Doubt That Hollywood Writing is Powering AI” reinforces a notion that has been apparent for some time: tech companies have exploited the intellectual property of film studios, which holds a rich repository of works crafted by numerous generations of union workers, to educate their artificial intelligence systems. By accumulating vast sums of capital from this questionable practice of grand larceny, these tech companies aim to resell expensive services back to the studios. These services not only imitate stolen works but also those created by Writers Guild of America members and Hollywood labor.
The studios, who own the rights to scripts penned by WGA writers, have taken no steps to prevent this theft. Instead, they’ve tolerated tech firms to raid their entire archives without seeking approval or providing any reimbursement. This lack of action on the part of the studios has resulted in harm to WGA members.
According to the collective bargaining agreement between the Guild and the studios, known as the MBA, the studios are contractually obligated to safeguard the copyrights of writers. Specifically, Article 50 of the MBA states that the studios hold in a trust capacity certain rights reserved for specific writer’s original works. Writers who possess separate rights under Article 16.B retain all other rights in the material, including the right to utilize these works for training artificial intelligence systems. Since the studios are custodians of those rights, they have a legal responsibility to prevent unauthorized use of the works for AI training purposes.
It’s time for the studios to come off the sidelines. After this industry has spent decades fighting piracy, it cannot stand idly by while tech companies steal full libraries of content for their own financial gain. The studios should take immediate legal action against any company that has used our members’ works to train AI systems.
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2024-12-12 23:55