Nothing had prepared William Passano for a new technology introduced in 1960 that threatened to upend his medical publishing business: the Xerox 914 photocopier. The machine offered the ability to produce cheap and quick duplicates that allowed the government’s National Library of Medicine to mass photocopy articles from his company’s copyrighted medical journals. Passano eventually sued in a case that went up to the Supreme Court, which ultimately took a cautious approach to regulating the emerging technology by ruling in 1975 that it was fair use for libraries to photocopy the originals. The justices left Congress to address the novel intellectual property issues raised in the case, leading to key revisions in copyright law a year later.
Fast forward half a century and the emergence of generative artificial intelligence has the similar potential to turn the entertainment industry on its head. While writers who spoke with The Hollywood Reporter weren’t initially spooked about the emergence of ChatGPT in January, with some stressing that the tool is incapable of writing funny jokes or producing usable results without substantial creative input, the tenor of the conversation has changed and it’s become a sticking point in negotiations in the writers strike. Creators and talent see the possibility for the technology to devalue their work or even outright replace them down the line in the absence of intervention from regulators or the courts: royalty-free music generators can compose a film score or beat, AI can write scripts and actors can be deepfaked into movie scenes.
But at the same time, Hollywood is embracing the technology, from using it to de-age actors to partnering with companies in the field to create AI-composed music. This is happening as the industry pushes for regulations. Michael Nash, chief digital officer for Universal Music Group, tells THR that AI programs training machine learning models by feeding them copyrighted works without permission from or payment to UMG’s artists “enables us to have a very important seat at the table around the evolution and use of these models, particularly with respect to developing new licensing opportunities.” He underscores the adoption of AI is to “put these tools in the hands of artists” to see “how far their vision can take this technology.”
In a hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet examining the intersection of AI and copyright law, key players in Hollywood moved for guardrails to protect their work. “The rapid introduction of generative AI systems is seen as an existential threat to the livelihood and continuance of our creative professions unless immediate steps are taken on legal interpretive and economic fronts to address these emerging issues,” said Ashley Irwin, presiden
