U.S. Creators Launch “Stealing Isn't Innovation” Campaign on Tech Companies' Massive Theft of Copyrighted Works

The Human Artistry Campaign announced the launch of an advocacy campaign on behalf of a broad cross-section of the American creative community to protest Big Tech's illegal mass harvesting of copyrighted works to build and power their Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) platforms. 

 

Driven by fierce competition for leadership in the new GenAI technology, profit-hungry technology companies, including those among the richest in the world as well as private equity-backed ventures, have copied a massive amount of creative content online without authorization or payment to those who created it. This massive rip-off imperils U.S. jobs, economic growth and global “soft power” supported by the U.S. creative industries. The theft erodes the very foundation of the U.S.'s world-leading entertainment industry and destroys incentives for the creation of new content. American creators are being sidelined and soon won't be able to afford to continue producing original works if AI developers are permitted to continue stealing them without authorization to produce AI-made copies that compete directly with the original. 

 

This illegal intellectual property grab fosters an information ecosystem dominated by misinformation, deepfakes, and a vapid artificial avalanche of low-quality materials [“AI slop”], risking AI model collapse and directly threatening America's AI superiority and international competitiveness. Licensing and a healthy enforcement environment help to thwart these challenges.

 

While the threat to the creative sector is significant, one solution that has been used in other technological eras and is starting to find favor in the AI era is licensing. Under licensing, authorized uses of copyrighted works are defined and creators are compensated for those authorized uses – while other uses are not permitted. Creators must also retain the right to opt out of GenAI training altogether.

 

Human Artistry Campaign Senior Advisor Dr. Moiya McTier said, “Real innovation comes from the human motivation to change our lives. It moves opportunity forward while driving economic growth and creating jobs. But AI companies are endangering artists' careers while exploiting their practiced craft, using human art and other creative works without authorization to amass billions in corporate earnings. Stealing someone's work isn't innovation, it's theft. America wins when technology companies and creators collaborate to make the highest quality consumer and enterprise digital products and tools. Solutions like licensing offer a path to a mutually beneficial outcome for all.”

 

Dr. McTier concluded, “Today, creators from various disciplines across the country posted a custom 'Stealing Isn't Innovation' banner on socials, and major news outlets deployed full-page ads sharing the same message. The 'static' represents our future if we continue permitting AI developers to behave this way: bland and devoid of human creativity.”

 

This unified, connected, ground level human movement will be amplified by news organizations deploying digital and physical full-page ads sharing the “Stealing Isn't Innovation” message: If we sacrifice America's creators on the altar of AI, the result will be a world without original human creations – no news, no art, no films, no music, no videos. Only AI sameness and regurgitated slop created by machines at the expense of human-made work and humanity itself.

 

GenAI's reliance on a never-ending supply of quality new data – original, human-created work - requires that intellectual property rights be respected. If economic incentives to innovate and generate new content are diminished, the quantity and quality of new content that can be used as training material declines as well, ultimately leading to AI model collapse as new models are left with nothing but synthetic material and slop on which to train. For America to retain its AI superiority, American creative work, and the creators themselves, must be incentivized and rewarded.

 

Consistent with the Human Artistry Campaign's founding principles, the “Stealing Isn't Innovation” campaign reminds everyone that partnership and collaboration, including free market licensing of valuable works that the AI companies wish to use, isn't optional, but consistent with established law. Despite claims that licensing is impractical, many content licensing agreements for AI have already been secured, clearly demonstrating that these companies know the law and recognize the market. Nevertheless, they continue to try and get away with theft.

 

For more information and to join the campaign, please visit stealingisntinnovation.com. 

Tweet