Universal Pictures aims to prevent people from using their content as assets for AI with new strategy
It is a dark time for the future of movies as theaters struggle to compete with streaming services and premature digital releases. And over the past few years, AI technology has been growing in our world and showing capabilities of scary proportions. One of the foreboding issues that both the Actors’ and Writers’ Guilds protested against a couple of years ago during the strikes was the threat of studios using AI to cut corners and take from working artists. While Hollywood is fighting the issue, the Chinese film industry is embracing it, as a feature-length AI-produced movie of A Better Tomorrow was announced.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Universal Pictures is implementing a new strategy that will try to cut off AI users at the source. Normally, programs would need assets to pull from as a jumping-off point to create something. So, starting this summer with films like How to Train Your Dragon, Jurassic World: Rebirth and Bad Guys 2, the studio has added a legal warning to their credits which states that their films “may not be used to train AI.” The warning also reads, “This motion picture is protected under the laws of the United States and other countries. Unauthorized duplication, distribution or exhibition may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution.”
While statements like this have been used in the past to combat general piracy of the film, Universal is adding the practice of data mining and content-pulling for AI usage under this umbrella, so that images, voices, music or anything else cannot be used to train AI programs. Per THR, “In some countries, the warning cites a 2019 European Union copyright law largely opposed by major tech companies that allows creators to opt out of having their material used in scientific research by explicitly reserving their rights.”
Universal is getting more aggressive as AI is becoming a bigger presence in the movie industry for concerning reasons beyond being useful tools. Last month, Edward Saatchi’s Fable Studios announced that Amazon had invested in an AI platform called Showrunner, which allows users to create episodes with a prompt of just a couple of words. Saatchi stated, “Hollywood streaming services are about to become two-way entertainment: audiences watching a Season of a show, loving it will now be able to make new episodes with a few words and become characters with a photo. Our relationship to entertainment will be totally different in the next 5 years. We can do so much more with AI.”
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