WGA urges US studios to take action over AI copyright ‘theft’

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) has urged the Hollywood studios and Netflix to “come off the sidelines” and take legal action against tech companies that have used its members’ work to train artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

The letter, circulated by the guild to press on Thursday, cites a recent article in The Atlantic claiming that Apple, Anthropic, Meta, Nvidia, Salesforce, and Bloomberg, among others, have used an AI training data set using dialogue from more than 53,000 films and 85,000 television episodes.

The guild wrote to the CEOs of Warner Bros Discovery, Disney, Paramount Global, NBCUniversal, Sony, Netflix, and Amazon MGM Studios, noting that its hard-fought collective bargaining agreement signed in 2023 after months of strike action requires studios to defend copyrights on behalf of writers.

The letter establishes a beachhead in what could escalate an issue that observers have been following ever since AI guardrails became a core demand in the union’s contract demands last year.

“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,” read an excerpt from the WGA letter, which appears in full at the bottom of this article.

Broadcast sister title Screen International has reached out to every company contacted by WGA and at time of writing had not heard back.

The WGA’s letter appears below:

Yesterday, the WGA sent the following letter to the CEOs of Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, Paramount Global, NBCUniversal, Sony, Netflix, and Amazon MGM Studios:

The November 18 Atlantic article “There’s No Longer Any Doubt That Hollywood Writing is Powering AI” confirms what was already clear to so many: tech companies have looted the studios’ intellectual property—a vast reserve of works created by generations of union labor—to 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.

The 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’ inaction has harmed WGA members.

The Guild’s collective bargaining agreement—the MBA—expressly requires the studios to defend their copyrights on behalf of writers. MBA Article 50 provides that the studios hold “in trust” 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.

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.

This article first appeared in Broadcast sister title Screen.