Daily SumUp

Less than two years after going on strike partly over the encroachment of AI in the entertainment industry, hundreds of actors, writers, directors, musicians, and other creative professionals have signed an open letter urging the White House to push back on AI companies trying to gobble up their copyrighted work. “We firmly believe that America’s global AI leadership must not come at the expense of our essential creative industries,” the letter reads in part, per Deadline. The document goes on to claim that the entertainment industry supports “2.3M American jobs with over $229Bn in wages annually,” but “AI companies are asking to undermine this economic and cultural strength by weakening copyright protections for the films, television series, artworks, writing, music, and voices used to train AI models at the core of multi-billion dollar corporate valuations.”

The letter’s 400-plus signatories include hundreds of household names, such as Paul McCartney, Guillermo del Toro, Ava DuVernay, Cate Blanchett, Alfonso Cuaron, Aubrey Plaza, Lilly Wachowski, Ben Stiller, Damon Lindelof, Lily Gladstone, Bette Midler, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ayo Edebiri, Taika Waititi, Cynthia Erivo, Mark Ruffalo, Natasha Lyonne, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Adam Scott, Paul Simon, and more. The correspondence, addressed to the White House Office of Science and Technology, began circulating this weekend.