Thom Yorke Joins Thousands of Artists to Protest Against Artificial Intelligence.

A group of 11,500 artists, including well-known actors, authors, musicians, and novelists, has signed a statement demanding the cessation of the unauthorized use of their creative works to train generative artificial intelligence tools, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT. In a brief letter of only 29 words, it is asserted that this unlicensed use represents a significant and unfair threat to the livelihoods of creators and should not be allowed.

Among the signatories are prominent figures such as Thom Yorke, lead singer of Radiohead; award-winning actresses Julianne Moore and Kevin Bacon; Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro; and ABBA composer and artist Björn Ulvaeus. Tech companies like OpenAI utilize data obtained from the internet to train their AI models, which can include texts, images, videos, music, and speeches. This data is essential for developing algorithms that enable users to interact in a way similar to human conversation or generate images and videos from textual descriptions.

The main issue lies in the fact that this data is often obtained without the consent of the artists, who receive neither compensation nor recognition for their work. Although creators of generative AI tools argue that their data collection methods are protected by “fair use” under copyright law, a growing number of artists have expressed their opposition to this practice, arguing that it constitutes a copyright violation.

In the past year, various lawsuits related to this issue have reached U.S. courts, forcing companies like OpenAI to defend themselves against copyright infringement claims. In response to the possibility of facing more legal actions, a growing number of companies dedicated to the development of generative AI are seeking licensing agreements with media publishers to access content for training in exchange for some form of compensation.

As generative artificial intelligence remains a relatively new technology, regulators are compelled to adapt, indicating that fully resolving this issue will take time.