“A dehumanizing process”: Julianne Moore, ABBA… thousands of artists are worried about AI

Artificial intelligence continues to worry. More than 11,500 artists have signed a petition sounding the alarm about the use of their creations to power AI algorithms. Among them, we find in particular Thom Yorke from Radiohead, Björn Ulvaeus from ABBA, the actress Julianne Moore, the writer Harlan Coben and Kazuo Ishiguro.

“The unauthorized use of artistic creations to train generative artificial intelligence is a major and unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind these works and must not be allowed,” the authors assert in one sentence. of the text of the petition still open for signatures.

Music, literature…

The music and literature sectors face the same challenges, with pieces and stories generated thanks to generative artificial intelligence which makes it possible to produce all kinds of content on simple request in everyday language. The petition was started by composer and former AI industry employee Ed Newton-Rex, according to the Guardian.

The founder of the first technology start-up in the field of AI-based music composition, which has since been acquired by Byte Dance, owner of TikTok, believes that specialized companies use content protected by rights without paying them of author to feed the algorithms which need this data to generate new ones. He denounces a “dehumanizing” process for artists.

Thom Yorke, Björn Ulvaeus, Jason Kay (Jamiroquai), John Rutter, Max Richter and Robert Smith (The Cure) have signed it on the musicians’ side. Among the novelists, we can cite the Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro, the author of successful thrillers Harlan Coben, Madeline Miller and James Patterson.

Last year, artists including John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George RR Martin filed a complaint against OpenAI (ChatGPT) for “systematic theft on a large scale”. Several Hollywood stars like Pedro Pascal, Jane Fonda and Mark Hamill supported a law to regulate AI in California, which was ultimately blocked by Governor Gavin Newsom.

On the other hand, others have chosen to collaborate like actor Casey Affleck, who last week signed a partnership with Meta and the horror film studio Blumhouse to test software for generating films using AI.