More than 400 Hollywood creatives, including director Guillermo del Toro and actors Cynthia Erivo and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, are urging the U.S. government to uphold existing copyright protections against artificial intelligence.
“We firmly believe that America’s global AI leadership must not come at the expense of our essential creative industries,” they wrote in a letter to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy last week.
“There is no reason to weaken or eliminate the copyright protections that have helped America flourish,” the letter said. “Not when AI companies can use our copyrighted material by simply doing what the law requires: negotiating appropriate licenses with copyright holders — just as every other industry does.”
The message was sent in response to the Trump administration’s request for public comment on the White House’s AI Action Plan, which aims to secure and advance the country’s position in the AI industry. Silicon Valley tech companies Google and OpenAI wrote their own letters.
There has been tension between AI companies and creatives, who object to AI models being trained on their work without their permission. The Writers Guild of America has pushed studios to sue AI companies that are engaging in this practice. Other organizations including the New York Times have sued OpenAI for copyright infringement.
Tech industry executives have said that they should be able to train AI models with content available online under the “fair use” doctrine, which allows for the limited reproduction of material without permission from the copyright holder.
In its letter to the White House, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, said, “Applying the fair use doctrine to AI is not only a matter of American competitiveness — it’s a matter of national security.”
The San Francisco startup known for ChatGPT argued that the rapid advances by China startup DeepSeek show that “America’s lead on frontier AI is far from guaranteed.” DeepSeek claimed it could compete with OpenAI at lower cost.
In January, President Trump announced the Stargate project, in which OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank will work on a venture to put hundreds of billions of dollars into building AI infrastructure in the U.S.
“If [China’s] developers have unfettered access to data and American companies are left without fair use access, the race for AI is effectively over,” Lehane said in his letter. “Ultimately, access to more data from the widest possible range of sources will ensure more access to more powerful innovations that deliver even more knowledge.”
Google, in its letter, called for “balanced copyright rules,” arguing that fair use and other exceptions to copyright protections “have been critical to enabling AI systems to learn from prior knowledge and publicly available data, unlocking scientific and social advances.”
But Hollywood creatives said that there is no reason to weaken or eliminate copyright protections and that AI companies can use copyrighted material by negotiating licenses with copyright holders.
The U.S. arts and entertainment industry supports more than 2.3 million U.S. jobs with more than $229 billion in wages annually; weakening copyright protections could undermine its economic and cultural strength, the creatives wrote in their letter.
Google and OpenAI “are arguing for a special government exemption so they can freely exploit America’s creative and knowledge industries, despite their substantial revenues and available funds,” the letter said.
In a statement, Google said it’s “confident current copyright law enables AI innovation.” OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The letter was signed by people who work in the entertainment industry, including writers, actors, musicians and costume designers. Prominent signers include Marisa Tomei, Carrie Coon, Ben Stiller, Natasha Lyonne, Mark Ruffalo, Ava DuVernay and Ron Howard.
Hollywood creatives pushed for more protections against AI when actors and writers went on strike in 2023. Guilds have voiced support for new laws regulating AI. In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed bills that would provide more protection to digital likenesses.
Meanwhile, some creatives have embraced the technology, saying it lets them test bold ideas without as many financial constraints.
