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Thousands of creatives from diverse fields such as art, film, music, and publishing have joined forces to oppose the unauthorized use of copyrighted materials in training generative AI models. Esteemed individuals including artists like Amoako Boafo, Kennedy Yanko, and Shantell Martin, novelists Margaret Drabble and Kazuo Ishiguro, rock musician Robert Smith, all members of Radiohead, and actors Julianne Moore and Kevin Bacon have backed this initiative. The declaration is hosted on a website with a clear mission statement: “The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.”
The campaign was launched by Ed Newton-Rex, a British composer based in the US. Newton-Rex co-founded Jukedeck, an AI music generation company, in 2014. Following Jukedeck's acquisition by ByteDance, Newton-Rex joined ByteDance’s European AI Lab, eventually leading the Stability AI audio team. He resigned in 2023, objecting to the company’s handling of copyrighted content without proper licenses, a practice justified by “fair use” claims. This issue is central to several ongoing legal battles in the AI sector.
In a conversation with The Guardian, Newton-Rex expressed the concern of roughly 20,000 signatories, stating: “There are three key resources that generative AI companies need to build AI models: people, compute and data. They spend vast sums on the first two—sometimes $1m per engineer, and up to $1bn per model. But they expect to take the third—training data—for free.” Newton-Rex emphasized, “When AI companies call this ‘training data,’ they dehumanize it. What we’re talking about is people’s work—their writing, their art, their music.”
Both in the US and the UK, AI’s rapid development raises complex legal and ethical questions about the future of cultural production. In the US, authors like John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, and George R.R. Martin are pursuing legal action against OpenAI for purported copyright violations. Similarly, illustrators Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz initiated lawsuits against AI firms, attracting more artists to their cause.
Across the Atlantic, Google has advocated for loosening restrictions on “text and data mining.” Current laws permit the use of copyrighted content for non-commercial uses, such as research. The UK government is considering an “opt-out” framework, wherein AI companies automatically use copyrighted materials unless creators explicitly refuse. Newton-Rex voiced concerns in The Guardian, explaining that “even the most well-run opt-out schemes get missed by most people who have the chance to opt out. You never hear about it, you miss the email. It’s totally unfair to put the burden of opting out of AI training on the creator whose work is being trained on.”
A host of industry bodies, such as the Artist Rights Alliance, the Artists Rights Society, the Concept Art Association, and the Human Artistry Campaign—dedicated to combating nonconsensual deepfakes—are signatories to Newton-Rex’s public statement.
This collective action represents a decisive stand against unauthorized AI-driven exploitation of creative works, emphasizing the significance of respecting creators' rights in the AI era.
