The Human Consent Foundation, the Cate Blanchett-backed nonprofit that tries to protect people’s likenesses from unauthorized scraping by AI models, and a legion of Hollywood companies have filed an amicus brief in The New York Times’ lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, asserting the tech companies’ position that they could not reasonably obtain rights for “misinterpretations” of content in light of an active licensing market.
The group’s 31-page brief was filed Friday evening in the Southern District of New York, and the group was joined by CAA, the Music Artists Coalition, the National Association of Voice Actors, Writer, Inc and the Creative Coalition on AI. The brief included as an appendix a series of Hollywood stars supporting the cause, including Anne Hathaway, Emma Thompson, Dan Levy, Ron Howard, Madonna, Olivia Wilde and many others.
“Defendants argued that licensing creative works for AI training was prohibitively expensive,” the brief reads. “Defendants also assert that there is no established way to evaluate training data. The facts demonstrate otherwise. The creative industries already have proven infrastructure and workflows to obtain rights to dispersed works on a large scale and cost-effectively.”
In a statement, Nikki Hexum, co-founder and CEO of HCF, said the filing aims to show the court “how the creative industry really works and recognize the solutions that have been built and continue to develop for this new digital age.”
“Our goal is to ensure that as the AI data licensing market grows, the humans who create value in this market are protected and have meaningful choice,” Hexum added. “We are not starting from scratch. There is already a functioning market and infrastructure for licensing creative works. We just need to make sure that new AI technology respects those limits and choices, including the choice not to participate.”
The Human Consent Foundation was founded as RSL Media in May by Hexum and Blanchett, launching a registry in June where people could record the permissions they gave to AI models to scrape their image. The HCF is also supported by Steven Soderbergh, and he and Blanchett made statements in their brief stating that the principle of authorization should not change in the AI era.
“I have worked in film and theater for over 30 years, and the principle has never changed since then,” Blanchett said in her memoir. “If someone wants to use my face, my voice or my image, they ask me first. There is a contract. There is a conversation. It’s not a new idea or a complicated legal framework, it’s simply the way we treat each other in this industry. Consent is not a barrier to creativity, it is the foundation of it..»
Other famous signatories include Ariana DeBose, Bette Midler, Christian Vesper, Christine Vachon, Helen Mirren, Dave Eggers, Francesca Amfitheatrof, Greg Berlanti, Julia Roberts, Melody Walker, Nina Gregory, Paul Feig, Ram Bergman, Rian Johnson, Richard Louderback, Robert De Niro, Rosario Dawson, Scarlett Johansson, Vince Gilligan and the Stan Lee Foundation.
An OpenAI spokesperson emphasized Variety to a blog post published Friday containing briefs from several groups — including the U.S. government, last month — supporting the tech giant’s position that its scraping was protected by the “fair use” doctrine, which gives people the right to use a copyrighted work without the permission of the rights holder in certain cases.
“Experts and leaders in a wide range of fields have recognized that fair use is a win-win solution that benefits everyone, and have shared their views with the Court by filing briefs in support of fair use,” the post read.
Microsoft did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
The amicus brief came a day after SAG-AFTRA, the Writers Guild of America and the American Federation of Musicians filed their own brief against OpenAI and Microsoft, urging the court that the tech companies’ claim that their actions constituted fair use would “render moot the terms labor and industry agreed to at the bargaining table.”
“This would harm not only the copyright owners, but also the people who create the work,” their Thursday brief read.
The New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, a major backer of the startup, in December 2023, alleging that the founder of ChatGPT violated the publisher’s copyrights by deleting thousands of news articles without authorization. The Times requested summary judgment in the case last month.
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