Hundreds of creative workers have signed a petition to protest the "large-scale misappropriation" of AI and call for the establishment of authorization and law enforcement mechanisms.

About 800 artists, writers, actors and musicians in the United States recently jointly launched a public initiative called “Stealing Isn’t Innovation” to condemn the “large-scale misappropriation” of creators’ works by generative artificial intelligence companies.

Signatories include writers George Saunders and Jodi Picoult, actors Cate Blanchett and Scarlett Johansson, as well as musicians such as R.E.M., Billy Corgan and The Roots.

The advocates pointed out in a press release that in the fierce competition for dominance of generative AI technology, some profit-oriented technology companies-including the world's richest companies and startups backed by private equity funds-have copied creative content on a large scale without authorization and without paying any compensation to the creators. The press release characterized this behavior as "illegal intellectual property seizure" and warned that this approach will spawn an information ecosystem full of misinformation, deep forgery and a large amount of low-quality content (called "AI garbage"), and may even cause the AI ​​model to "collapse", thus directly threatening the United States' advantages in the field of artificial intelligence and its international competitiveness.

The action was initiated by the Human Artistry Campaign, whose alliance members include the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Professional Sports Players Union, and the Screen Actors Union SAG-AFTRA. According to the introduction, the "Stealing is not Innovation" related publicity will be intensively launched through full-page newspaper advertisements and social media. Key demands include: establishing a systematic content authorization mechanism, building a "healthy law enforcement environment", and giving artists a clear right to choose - allowing them to refuse their works to be used to train generative AI models.

At the policy level, U.S. President Donald Trump and his technology industry allies are trying to reshape the way AI regulatory powers are distributed, pushing the federal government to take control of states' regulatory space for AI, and seeking to impose punitive measures on state governments that try to legislate on their own. At the same time, at the industrial level, those copyright holders who were originally opposed to technology companies are increasingly turning to reaching content licensing agreements with AI companies, so that the use of protected works can be carried out under a payment and contract framework; at the current stage, the licensing model seems to have become a compromise that is temporarily acceptable to both technology companies and rights holders.