As AI companies lean on creative industries for training data, artists ramp up their dissent

Rapid artificial intelligence innovation has pitted creatives and technologists in opposition, and in the last week alone, nearly every day has brought new skirmishes.

On Monday, actress Scarlett Johansson threw OpenAI chief Sam Altman in hot water over his company’s use of a chatbot voice that sounded similar to hers, after she declined to record her own voice for the AI. “I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference,” she said in a statement. OpenAI denied any intentional resemblance and paused use of the chatbot's voice.

On Wednesday, OpenAI cut a deal with News Corp to train its large language models on the publisher’s news properties, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, The Sun, and a dozen more. The Information’s editor-in-chief Jessica Lessin called the move a “fatal error” because it works against publishers’ own business interests, as AI companies build products that could replace news sites. A New York Times lawsuit filed in December against OpenAI for using its content to train ChatGPT is ongoing.

On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that Google and Meta are talking with major Hollywood studios about licensing content to train their AI models. Warner Bros. Discovery is said to be open to sharing some of its titles, while Netflix and Disney are unwilling to license their content.

The friction isn’t new. Consent and compensation around the use of AI were huge negotiating points driving last year’s strikes by Hollywood actors and writers. But as tech companies race to create more advanced models—especially in the difficult and finicky world of video generation—the conflict has only heated up. AI companies require mass amounts of data to train their technologies, and creative industries are rich sources of original material. Voice acting, writing, film, photography, music—every art form appears to be a target for AI. And many creatives have no interest in their work being used as training data.

As my colleague Sharon Goldman covered in last week’s Data Sheet, more than 200 musicians signed an open letter demanding protections against AI, calling it an “assault on human creativity.” The artists include Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, and Billie Eilish, who have some cultural sway on the matter.

Lesser-known artists have taken to Reddit and X, formerly known as Twitter, to share recommendations on how to protect their work. One self-made guide from an artist on X shows Instagram and Facebook users how to prevent their profiles from being used to train Meta’s AI models. Posted on Thursday, it has been shared more than 5,800 times and saved by more than 8,000 accounts on X.

All signs point to a continued push from AI companies to acquire more data, indicating more rifts between tech companies and artists to come. No creator is safe.

We’ll be discussing this topic and many more at Fortune’s annual, invite-only Brainstorm Tech summit in Park City, Utah, from July 15-17. Joining us for a conversation about the future of AI in Big Tech are Google's chief scientist Jeff Dean and Amazon’s head scientist Rohit Prasad. Sequoia managing partner Roelof Botha will discuss big bets in venture capital, Runway cofounder and CEO Cristobal Valenzuela will talk about how AI is changing filmmaking, and Agility Robotics CEO Peggy Johnson will address how human-centric robots are revolutionizing industries. Want to join us? Register here.

With that, here’s the latest tech news.

Rachyl Jones

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