Paul McCartney, Cynthia Erivo, and Chris Rock were among the over 400 celebrities who signed an open letter on March 18th asking the Trump administration to uphold existing copyright protections against AI training practices. Google and OpenAI are pushing for broadening the U.S. fair use doctrine to cover AI developers.
Google joined OpenAI in submitting proposals requesting President Trump’s government to ease restrictions on AI training, especially around the use of copyrighted materials. Both tech giants submitted policy proposals on March 13th, advocating for a more flexible approach to AI regulations as the Trump administration prepared its ‘AI Action Plan’ by mid-2025. In February, the Trump administration called for public comments on the AI action plan that the White House said would define ‘priority policy actions’ regarding the U.S. position in the global AI industry.
The entertainment industry’s battle with AI continued, with over 400 entertainers signing an open letter urging the Trump administration to uphold existing copyright protections against AI training practices. The letter, in part, read, “We firmly believe that America’s global AI leadership must not come at the expense of our essential creative industries.”
‘Celebrity consortium’ urges Trump’s administration to protect creatives
Ben Stiller, Mark Ruffalo and More Than 400 Hollywood Names Urge Trump to Not Let AI Companies ‘Exploit’ Copyrighted Works // This is an appeal but doesn't lay out much of an argument that will need to be made. It is very easy to jump to "right to train" but… pic.twitter.com/dp2Ct8VsL5
— Steven Sinofsky (@stevesi) March 19, 2025
OpenAI and Google believe American copyright laws should allow AI companies to train systems using copyrighted work without permission. However, over 400 liberal celebrities – including Ben Stiller, Olivia Wilde, Cynthia Erivo, Aubrey Plaza, Paul McCartney, Mark Ruffalo, and Cate Blanchett – asked President Trump to push back on this.
German artist Layla Vladi said she highly respected the ‘artists for speaking up and standing up for copyright protection’. Vladi believes that celebrities who are protesting to protect the rights of musicians, artists, and creatives against companies profiting from generative AI content are absolutely right.
Sir Paul McCartney spoke to the BBC on January 25th, calling on the government not to go through with its plans to upend copyright law to enable ‘rip off’ AI technology. Sir Elton John agreed that this plan would allow global big tech companies to gain free and easy access to artists’ work in order to train their artificial intelligence and create competing music, thus diluting and threatening young artists’ creative content and earnings even further.
“We’re the people, you’re the government. You’re supposed to protect us. That’s your job. If you’re putting through a bill, make sure you protect the creative thinkers, the creative artists, or you’re not going to have them.”
A Google spokesperson reportedly emphasized that the existing fair use framework provided a solid legal foundation for AI innovation. OpenAI agreed with the Trump administration that AI created prosperity and freedom worth fighting for—especially for younger generations whose future would be shaped by how this administration approached AI.
Celebrities’ letter says the issue goes beyond the entertainment industry
According to the letter’s text, this issue went well beyond the entertainment industry, as the right to train AI on all copyright-protected content impacted ‘all of America’s knowledge industries’. The U.S. arts and entertainment industry supported over 2.3 million American jobs with over $229 billion in wages annually while providing the foundation for American democratic influence and soft power abroad, highlighted in the letter. It went on to note that AI companies were 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 celebrities said that when tech and AI companies demanded free access to all data and information, they threatened not just movies, books, and music but also the work of all writers, publishers, photographers, scientists, architects, engineers, designers, doctors, software developers, and all other professionals who worked with computers and generated intellectual property.
The letter pointed out that Google (valued at $2Tn) and OpenAI (valued at over $157Bn) were arguing for a special government exemption so they could freely exploit America’s creative and knowledge industries despite their substantial revenues and available funds. It recommended that the American AI Action Plan uphold existing copyright frameworks to maintain the strength of America’s creative and knowledge industries and American cultural influence abroad.
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