OAN Staff Blake Wolf
3:53 PM – Friday, March 21, 2025
A number of Hollywood stars who previously slammed President Donald Trump’s administration are now reportedly seeking its assistance in enforcing artificial intelligence (AI) copyright protections — as the entertainment industry fights back against the impact of the new technology.
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Actor and director Ben Stiller, musician Paul McCartney, and actor Mark Ruffalo are among the over 400 entertainment figures who signed an open letter to President Trump’s administration this week.
“We firmly believe that America’s global AI leadership must not come at the expense of our essential creative industries,” the letter began, which was addressed to the Trump administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is a department of the United States government, part of the Executive Office of the President. Congress established the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to provide the president and Executive Office of the President (EOP) with advice on the scientific, engineering, and technological aspects of national policy and the work of the executive branch. This includes matters of the economy, national security, homeland security, health, foreign relations, the environment, education, and resource management, according to the White House.
“America’s arts and entertainment industry supports over 2.3M American jobs with over $229Bn in wages annually, while providing the foundation for American democratic influence and soft power abroad. 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 group’s letter continued.
For years, companies training AI tech have purportedly collected copyrighted art, books, music, and other creative mediums of entertainment without paying for it. The companies can then create their own works while profiting from the “stolen” material.
“For nearly 250 years, U.S. copyright law has balanced [a] creator’s rights with the needs of the public, creating the world’s most vibrant creative economy,” it added. “We recommend that the American AI Action Plan uphold existing copyright frameworks to maintain the strength of America’s creative and knowledge industries, as well as American cultural influence abroad.”
The letter is in response to submissions placed by Google and OpenAI, requesting the ability to train their own AI models on copyrighted material.
“The federal government can both secure Americans’ freedom to learn from AI and avoid forfeiting our AI lead to the PRC by preserving American AI models’ ability to learn from copyrighted material,” OpenAI’s letter read.
The entertainment industry’s letter continued, countering OpenAI’s point: “There is no reason to weaken or eliminate the copyright protections that have helped America flourish. Not when AI companies can use our copyrighted material by simply doing what the law requires: negotiating appropriate licenses with copyright holders – just as every other industry does.”
Many of these Hollywood figures have long criticized Trump, including Ruffalo, who has been an outspoken critic of him — even characterizing the 47th president as an “Enemy of America from within.”
Director Ava DuVernay, who also reportedly signed the letter, previously slammed Trump and Musk as well, writing that the “country is 1742599706 run by criminals, but that criminality is seen as completely different than a Black kid on the corner who might buy, sell marijuana.”
“The Black kid is in prison for years, while criminals are elected and make millions of dollars and sell electric cars,” she continued.
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