AI "Avenger" Scarlett Johansson takes the fight to Big Tech. The rest of Hollywood & the creative community should follow.
Artists have had enough with Sam Altman & Silicon Valley’s “take first, apologize later" M.O.
Welcome back from the long weekend. Time for your first summer brAIn dump! Last week I said there wouldn’t be a newsletter this week due to the holiday. But, channeling my best Sam Altman, those were alternative facts. Of course I had to write my “fresh take” about last week’s Scarlett Johansson/OpenAI fiasco. It’s this week’s “the mAIn event” (my “AI:10” returns next week). Then, the “AI legal case tracker” - updates on the key generative AI copyright infringement cases that impact media and entertainment. Finally, “the cocktAIl” - my special AI mixology of events, etc.
I. ScarJo takes the generative AI fight to Big Tech. Now will “Big Media” and the rest of the creative community follow?
Does anyone really believe OpenAI CEO Sam Altman anymore? He launched OpenAI in 2015 with a non-profit mission to develop AI that “benefits all of humanity.” Fast forward nine years later, humanity be damned — Altman needed his very for-profit “her” moment when OpenAI launched its latest version, ChatGPT-4o. Problem is, Scarlett Johansson was having none of it. Neither is much of the creative community, which is finally beginning to understand its collective power and is rising up to say, “stop the madness!”
That “madness” is the arrogant taking of not just creative works -- which is the subject of an ever-growing number of infringement cases in the courts – but now also the taking of creators’ personas themselves. Exposed were Altman’s true colors when, as widely reported: (1) he asked Johansson for permission to use her voice, (2) she declined, (3) then he asked again just two days before OpenAI’s big ChatGPT-4o launch, and (4) went forward anyway when he didn’t hear back. How dare ScarJo say “no” anyway? But here’s the thing Sam, “no” means “no.”
Altman and his apologists want us to believe that there is no harm, no foul here because OpenAI reportedly used a faux Johansson voice, not her actual one. But that doesn’t diminish Altman’s taking, both ethically and legally. We know what Altman was really doing, and a wide body of established NIL (name, image and likeness) law protects celebrities from companies using “sound-alikes” for commercial purposes.
Singers Tom Waits and Bette Midler faced surprisingly similar fact patterns decades ago. Just like Johansson, both singers refused to license their voices for major ad campaigns by Frito-Lay and Ford Motors, respectively. But the big brands went ahead anyway using voices that mimicked their real thing. Although those and other NIL cases reflect the current state-by-state NIL patchwork, national legislation is now being considered in Congress to put an end to this theft of the economic value of artist personas (known as their “right of publicity”).
Altman’s gaffe at the hands of Johansson may end up being a watershed moment. Her refusal to “take it” shines Hollywood’s bright spotlight on what’s really going on here – and it certainly ain’t Big Tech concerns for so-called “ethical AI” and AI safety. If there were any doubt about that, the recent departures of OpenAI’s two top executives on that front – and the dissolution of their entire “risk mitigation” team -- erased it. Not a good couple weeks for Sam.
This Altman episode, of course, followed fast on the heels of Apple’s own humiliating gaffe with its now infamous iPad “Crush” video ad that literally smashes all of humanity’s creativity down into Apple’s new slimmer iPad. Apple’s gaffe, and what it represents, is even more telling than Altman’s. If Apple – the most trusted Big Tech home to creators – can be so tone deaf to their justifiable concerns, then can it be sincerely doubted that an undercurrent of Silicon Valley indifference to creators’ interests is to blame?
We’ve seen how this lack of basic guardrails has played out before. Social Media’s relentless thirst for dollars in the name of progress created the ad-driven online ecosystem that has divided our country and decimated so many young lives. Do we have any doubt that an unchecked generative AI marketplace could lead to similar harms, perhaps at an even greater disruptive level?
So, good for Johansson, because she single-handedly hit the “red alert” button and caused Altman to blink and reveal who he really is, which is certainly not a man who deeply cares about humanity. Altman famously said this in a The New Yorker interview in 2016: “When I realized that intelligence can be simulated, I let the idea of our uniqueness go, and it wasn’t as traumatic as I thought.” In other words, sentience is sentience, regardless of whether it is human or artificial. It’s all the same in his book. I assume he would say the same thing about human and AI “creativity” as well.
Hugh Grant is credited for largely doing to Tim Cook what ScarJo did with Altman. He sounded the alarm when Apple crushed the entire creative community into one thin piece of technology. Enough was enough already.
Now it’s time for “Big Media” – the major studios, streamers, record labels, game companies, publishers – to follow Johansson’s and Grant’s lead and band together with a unified voice to call attention to the issue of Big Tech’s wholesale taking of copyrighted works for its generative AI training. Unified collective action can best lead to both a more equitable sharing of the generative AI pie going forward and significant payments for Big Tech’s past misdeeds of scraping copyrighted works without consent or compensation.
We see signs of progress in that regard in the wake of Johansson’s fight. President Tino Gagliardi of the American Federation of Musicians called on all creatives to understand what’s at stake. “[I]f someone can try and do this to one of the most famous actresses in the world, they can absolutely do it to anyone.”
And, rather than fight or dismiss the creative community at every turn, Big Tech should welcome it into their tent to create a fair consent and compensation system. It’s in Silicon Valley’s best interests to listen to the creative community’s concerns early when new transformational technology is born, rather than wait for justifiable blowback and resistance. That friction only slows down the progress they so desperately seek. Inclusion and recognition of value – rather than entitlement and taking – will lead to a generative AI world that works for all.
The good news is that the negative spotlight and litigation pressure are now forcing Big Tech to come to the table to negotiate with IP owners at a faster pace.
This isn’t about stopping generative AI. Far from it. I’ve led several tech-forward media companies, so I fully embrace technology done right. But that’s the problem here. It isn’t. Now it’s time to flip the script to make sure the creative community gives consent and shares the pie that its taken content enabled in the first place.
[What do you think? Send me your feedback to peter@creativemedia.biz].
II. the AI legal case tracker - updates on key AI litigation
I lay out the facts - and the latest developments - via this link to the “AI case tracker” tab on “the brAIn” website. You’ll get everything you need (including my detailed analysis of each case). These are the cases I track:
(1) The New York Times v. Microsoft & OpenAI
(2) Sarah Silverman, et al. v. Meta
(3) Sarah Silverman v. OpenAI
(4) Universal Music Group, et al. v. Anthropic
(5) Getty Images v. Stability AI and Midjourney
NOTE: Check out the “AI case tracker” tab at the top of the page at “the brAIn” website.
Send feedback to my newsletter via email at peter@creativemedia.biz.
III. the cocktAIl- your AI mix of “must attend” AI events
After all, it’s always happy hour somewhere!
(1) UPCOMING IN JULY - Digital Hollywood’s first generative AI-focused virtual summit, “The Digital Hollywood AI Summer Summit,” (July 22nd - 25th). I’ll be moderating two great sessions. Learn more here via this link. It’s all entirely free!
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