AI has become prevalent in our world in a remarkably short amount of time. It infiltrates many aspects of our day-to-day lives almost imperceptibly while industries wrestle with the ethics and legality of using this new technology in their businesses. Take Hollywood, for example, which must now come to terms with AI and determine not just if the artificial can create art, but also what rights creatives have to their works and performances.
Hollywood versus Big Tech
“I’m a little PO’d, you know,” said Morgan Freeman in an interview with The Guardian. “I’m like any other actor: Don’t mimic me with falseness. I don’t appreciate it and I get paid for doing stuff like that, so if you’re gonna do it without me, you’re robbing me.”
He is not alone in these sentiments. On March 13, over 400 Hollywood creatives signed a letter to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to uphold copyright protections in response to the Trump administration’s request for public comment on the White House’s AI Action Plan. In their letter, they said that AI companies could use copyrighted material by negotiating licenses with copyright holders. At the same time, tech companies like OpenAI and Google sent letters arguing that the “fair use” doctrine allows them to use copyrighted material to train their AIs without permission. They added that exceptions should be made for them to have broader access in order to stay ahead of other countries in the AI race.
Several court cases have been filed against AI companies over copyright infringement. One such example includes a court case filed by actress and comedian Sarah Silverman and 12 other authors against Meta over copyright infringement. However, the case was recently dismissed solely on the basis of incorrect arguments made by the plaintiff’s lawyer. Judge Chhabria emphasized that because this was not a class action case, the decision only affects the 13 authors and not “the countless others whose works Meta used to train its models.”
Additionally, a trio of writers sued AI company Anthropic for training its AI — Claude — on copyrighted books and lost. Presiding Judge Alsup concluded that the ability of the AI to take in thousands of written works and turn them into its own text qualifies as transformation, or the act of changing a work through additions and deletions until it is something entirely different from the source material. However, the company will face trial in December over how they obtained these works.
However, not everyone is as wary about the rise of AI. Some members of Hollywood are embracing the opportunities and possibilities that this technology introduces to the creative field. Oscar winners Matthew McConaughey and Sir Michael Caine have teamed up with AI company ElevenLabs, giving the company permission to use their voices.
“It’s not about replacing voices,” Caine said in a statement. “It’s about amplifying them, opening doors for new storytellers everywhere. I’ve spent a lifetime telling stories. ElevenLabs will help the next generation tell theirs.”
Caine and McConaughey are just some of the most recent additions to the company’s catalogue of famous voices that already includes Dr. Maya Angelou, Dr. Alan Turing, Liza Minelli and Art Garfunkel. ElevenLabs has also partnered with Lucasfilm and Google’s Gemini to introduce Darth Vader’s voice to Fortnite (with the late James Earl Jones’ permission and close collaboration with his family).
Rise of the machines
As these cases continue to arise and the law is confronted with managing the demands of creatives and tech companies alike, there is another query: Can AI really create?
Some, evidently, are not keen on the idea.
“My concern is not artificial intelligence, but natural stupidity,” said Frankenstein director Guillermo del Toro in an interview with NPR. “AI, particularly generative AI — I am not interested, nor will I ever be interested. I'm 61, and I hope to be able to remain uninterested in using it at all until I croak.”
Meanwhile, Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader claimed in an interview with Vanity Fair that AI is a tool: “When you’re an author, you have to describe someone’s reaction. You use a code — you use a code of words, a certain number of letters, and so forth, and you express their facial reaction. An actor has their own code. Well, now you’re a pixelator, and you can create the face, and you can create the emotion on the face, and you can sculpt it the same way an author sculpts the reaction in a novel or a story.”
In this vein, there is AI actress Tilly Norwood created by Particle 6 Productions. SAG-AFTRA quickly issued a statement after her unveiling, stating that this computer-generated character “creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing livelihoods and devaluing human artistry.”
Particle 6 founder Eline Van der Velden defended her creation, stating that it is not a substitute or replacement for human actors. “Just as animation, puppetry or CGI opened fresh possibilities without taking away from live acting, AI offers another way to imagine and build stories,” she stated.
James Cameron, the director of Titanic and Avatar, has taken a more dual-sided approach. In an interview with Rolling Stone about his upcoming movie Ghosts of Hiroshima, Cameron discussed his stance: “I’m leaning into teaching myself the tools of generative AI so that I can incorporate them into my future art, but I utterly reject the premise that AI can take the place of actors and take the place of filmmakers and all that sort of thing.”
Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski will return to the big screen for the first time in a decade with his film Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, which is about a time traveler trying to stop AI from taking over the world (again). He gave his opinion on AI used in film and television to Dextero.
“I think there’s no doubt that you’re going to be able to go, ‘I want to watch a movie, surprise me. I want to watch a movie that’s, you know, The Godfather with talking frogs,’” he explained. “It’s gonna be there, it’s gonna be good, there’s no doubt. But what did it just take away? Isn’t there something in us that makes us want to create whatever you love? You love fly fishing, it’ll fly fish for you. ‘No, I mean, I want to go fly fishing!’ I think it’s weird to take away what makes us human.”
Does AI dream of generative sheep?
There is no question that the decisions made in the coming years will have great effects on creatives across all mediums. Looking into this field myself, I wonder how the landscape will change. One issue that comes to mind is how AI is perceived as a whole. It has become an umbrella term in the media that is used to grab attention, strike fear or inspire wonder in the reader.
Perhaps the best way to handle the AI discussion would be to begin with more specific, clear-cut terminology. The AI used in ChatGPT, for instance, is not the same as the de-aging AI technology used in movies or facial recognition in the security field — yet they all fall under the same moniker. Of course, there is also the question of whether AI can truly create. In my mind, AI will never be able to create on its own, as the art of creation is inherently human. Art comes from the soul, from lived experiences that make up our personalities and our character. As a machine, as something synthetic made to train on the thoughts and experiences of humans, it can never produce something unique of its own mind. It may be a tool, but it can never be a creator.
To be continued...
Whether you support or oppose the use of AI in any capacity, the truth is that this technology is here to stay. It will continue to evolve, and to be integrated into almost every facet of our lives, if it hasn’t already. But how do we as a society intend to approach this? How will the law determine the rights of creatives? How will creatives utilize or abstain from partaking in the use of AI? Hollywood has long warned us about the existential threat of artificial intelligence (through The Terminator, The Matrix, 2001: A Space Odyssey and WALL-E, among other movies). Only time will tell how they choose to respond now that science fiction has become science fact.
