The Writers Guild of America is forcefully calling on Hollywood’s major studios to take a stand on the purported use of their members’ works as AI training data.
Leaders of the WGA West and East demanded that companies take “immediate legal action” against any firms that have used writers’ work to train AI tools in a letter sent to the chief executives of Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, Paramount Global, NBCUniversal, Sony, Netflix and Amazon MGM Studios on Wednesday.
“It’s time for the studios to come off the sidelines,” the letter stated. “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 letter cited a Nov. 18 story in The Atlantic that reported that a data set that being used by Apple, Meta, Anthropic, Salesforce, Nvidia and others trained off of film and television writers’ work. Rather than using scripts, reporter Alex Reisner said the data set ingested information from a website called OpenSubtitles.org — which included dialogue from projects like Breaking Bad, Twin Peaks and even Academy Awards telecasts.
The union claims that this story “confirms” that “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.” The union alleges that now, having wrested this information, tech companies are attempting to “sell back to the studios highly-priced services that plagiarize stolen works created by WGA members and Hollywood labor.”
The union leaders also refer to an article in its collective bargaining agreement with major studios that it argues “requires the studios to defend their copyrights on behalf of writers.”
Read the letter in full below.
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.
