SAGAFTRA counter lobbies for AI aff

The New York Times, the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), the News Media Alliance, Getty Images, and other organizations and trade groups representing artists, musicians, and journalists have complained that AI companies are violating copyright law by copying their material and using it to train AI. The use of AI was a core concern during this year’s historic writers’ and actors’ strikes.

“Almost all of these AI companies are ingesting copyrighted works in order to train their AI, and in most instances they are not licensing, they’re not getting the permission, and they’re not compensating the copyright owners for using those works,” Keith Kupferschmid, CEO of the Copyright Alliance, told us.

The Copyright Alliance, which represents over two million copyright holders and over fifteen thousand organizations, said in a comment to the Copyright Office that other than online piracy, “no copyright issue has drawn more interest from the Copyright Alliance membership than generative AI.”