Hollywood Unions Fight OpenAI Copyright Battle

Four major entertainment unions filed a joint amicus brief on Thursday urging a federal judge to reject a fair use exemption for OpenAI. SAG-AFTRA, the Writers Guild of America East and West, and the American Federation of Music argue that the trillion-dollar company is illegally taking work from middle- and working-class people. The thirty-four-page document warns that a blanket exemption would trigger a massive transfer of value from human creators straight to tech corporations. And here is the catch. The brief points out that a broad fair use ruling would completely wipe out the new licensing terms those unions fought for during their recent bargaining talks. Instead of a blanket rule, the unions want the court to treat the dispute as an ordinary copyright case decided on a case-by-case basis. They argue that training AI models on unlicensed human work harms everyone from major news outlets to the countless individual professionals behind the art.