Hundreds of Hollywood stars together with Ben Stiller, Cate Blanchett and Cynthia Erivo have urged President Donald Trump to guard movie, TV and music copyrights towards huge tech and synthetic intelligence.
The open letter — signed by over 400 actors, administrators and artists — hits again towards tech giants like Google and OpenAI, who say their AI fashions have to be allowed to coach on an unlimited vary of copyrighted work or threat being left behind by Chinese rivals.
But “weakening copyright protections” and permitting tech giants to “exploit America’s creative and knowledge industries” would threaten “the world’s most vibrant creative economy,” says the Hollywood letter.
The U.S. leisure business helps over 2.3 million jobs that generate some $230 billion in annual wages, in addition to “providing the foundation for American democratic influence and soft power abroad,” it says.
The intervention comes after Trump in January signed an govt order committing to take away “unnecessary government control” of AI and enhance “America’s global AI dominance.”
The White House invited firms and different events to submit strategies.
Google and OpenAI stated they have to be allowed to coach their AI fashions on the widest potential vary of copyrighted content material, warning that rival nations may in any other case acquire a harmful benefit.
If Chinese builders “have unfettered access to data and American companies are left without fair use access, the race for AI is effectively over,” wrote OpenAI, noting China’s fast progress with fashions like DeepSeek.
The Hollywood counter-letter was first despatched to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy final week. Organizers stated they’re persevering with to assemble signatures.
AI has change into an existential concern in Hollywood, the place studios and producers are eager to discover its cost-cutting potential, however many creatives worry that its use may destroy jobs and injury the standard of content material.
Artificial intelligence was a central difficulty within the strikes that in 2023 introduced the U.S. leisure business to an costly, months-long halt.
Writers and actors finally agreed offers with studios together with strict AI protections, requiring consent and compensation if AI fashions practice on writers’ film scripts, or construct computer-generated characters utilizing actors’ likenesses.
But the difficulty has returned to the fore with Trump’s election and the ever-increasing grip of main tech firms on Hollywood, and the U.S. financial system extra broadly.
“Make no mistake: this issue goes well beyond the entertainment industry, as the right to train AI on all copyright-protected content impacts all of America’s knowledge industries,” says the letter.
© 2025 AFP