\tThe Writers Guild of America\u2018s east and west chapters have sent a strongly-worded letter to the heads of the major Hollywood studios, criticizing them for inaction as artificial intelligence appears to be taking copy-written scripts and using it to \u201cplagiarize stolen works.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe letters were sent on Thursday to Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon MGM Studios; Disney CEO Bob Iger; NBCUniversal Studios & Entertainment chair Donna Langley; Netflix co-CEO and president Ted Sarandos; Paramount Global co-CEOs George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins; Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Ravi Ahuja; and Warner Bros. Discovery president\/CEO David Zaslav. In the letter, the WGAW and WGAE officers cite a Nov. 18 article by The Atlantic, noting that \u201ctech companies have looted the studios\u2019 intellectual property\u2014a vast reserve of works created by generations of union labor\u2014to train their artificial intelligence systems.\u201d \t<\/p>\n
\tThe WGA officers go on to criticize the studios for doing \u201cnothing to stop this theft. \u00a0They have allowed tech companies to plunder entire libraries without permission or compensation. The studios\u2019 inaction has harmed WGA members.\u201d <\/p>\n
\t\t\t \t\t\tPopular on Variety\t\t \t \t\t \t \tThe letter goes on to note that the WGA\u2019s collective bargaining agreement \u201cexpressly requires the studios to defend their copyrights on behalf of writers,\u201d and demands that the studios \u201ctake immediate legal action against any company that has used our members\u2019 works to train AI systems.\u201d Insiders note, however, that the WGA contract does not include any protection against AI training, hence the need to go public with these concerns.<\/p>\n
\tHere is the text of the full letter:<\/p>\n
\tThe November 18 Atlantic article \u201cThere\u2019s No Longer Any Doubt That Hollywood Writing is Powering AI\u201d confirms what was already clear to so many: tech companies have looted the studios\u2019 intellectual property\u2014a vast reserve of works created by generations of union labor\u2014to train their artificial intelligence systems. Having amassed billions in capital on this foundation of wholesale theft, these tech companies now seek to sell back to the studios highly-priced services that plagiarize stolen works created by WGA members and Hollywood labor.<\/p>\n
\tThe studios, as copyright holders of works written by WGA members, have done nothing to stop this theft. They have allowed tech companies to plunder entire libraries without permission or compensation. The studios\u2019 inaction has harmed WGA members. \t<\/p>\n
\tThe Guild\u2019s collective bargaining agreement\u2014the MBA\u2014expressly requires the studios to defend their copyrights on behalf of writers. MBA Article 50 provides that the studios hold \u201cin trust\u201d rights reserved to certain writers of original works. Writers who have separated rights in those works under Article 16.B retain all other rights in the material, including the right to use the works to train AI systems. As holders of those rights in trust, the studios have a fiduciary obligation to protect against the unauthorized use of the works for AI training purposes.<\/p>\n
\tIt\u2019s 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\u2019 works to train AI systems.<\/p>\n
\t\u00a0Sincerely,\u00a0<\/p>\n
\tWGAW Officers \u00a0<\/p>\n
\tMeredith Stiehm, President<\/p>\n
\tMichele Mulroney, Vice President <\/p>\n
\t\u00a0Betsy Thomas, Secretary-Treasurer\u00a0<\/p>\n
\tWGAE Officers<\/p>\n
\tLisa Takeuchi Cullen, President\u00a0<\/p>\n
\tChristopher Kyle, Secretary-Treasurer\u00a0<\/p>\n
\tErica Saleh, Vice President, Film\/TV\/Streaming\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Writers Guild of America\u2018s east and west chapters have sent a strongly-worded letter to the heads of the major Hollywood studios, criticizing them for inaction as artificial intelligence appears to be taking copy-written scripts and using it to \u201cplagiarize stolen works.\u201d The letters were sent on Thursday to Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon MGM […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21532,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}